Code: Apocalypse
by Zoey Overbeck
Summary: XANA has what he wants and is ready to use it- it's only a matter of time before the chaos begins and the world begins to end. Jeremie and Waldo must find a way to delay XANA for enough time so XANA will be gone from humanity once and for all.
1. Chapter I

_Italics- thought_

'Aelita'- Clone Aelita, identified by this, though the other pronouns or adjectives/nouns relating to her will not have it.

**The Beginning**

**Code: Apocalypse, Chapter I**

Emerald eyes flashed into the night, the pupils glinting with malicious intent at the task prepared for it. On the large, single bed in the room lay the blond, sleeping peacefully without knowing what was about to happen, slightly turning in the sheets as he continued to slumber. The owner of the emerald eyes stalked closer to the bed, gripping something in her fist, something that was about do its dirty job soon. The moonlight filtered down through the window, and it hit the blade, making it a stark contrast to the darkness of the room as it glistened. 'Aelita' crept closer to Jeremie, a wicked smile gracing her lips as she continued stalking towards him. Jeremie knew too much, she reasoned, and must be eliminated in order for XANA's plan to fully work.

She had nothing in her head except for the general wariness of the surroundings, the mission of what she was to do, and the constant feed of information from XANA. She listened, in case he might have heard the footsteps in which she tried to conceal, but all that she heard was the silence, occasionally interrupted by his soft breathing. 'Aelita' slowly raised he hand as soon as she got close enough, still clutching the dagger, and searched for the best spot in which the dagger could penetrate his skin and instantly kill him without him waking up and yelling, and without it being too messy. No, XANA wanted it as swift and as clean as possible, otherwise there would be complications and a large scale investigation. She did not hear anything else; 'her' ears were deafened by the harsh beating of her artificial heart as she prepared herself.

The dagger was raised to several feet above his heart, and the arm holding it was about to let the dagger plunge into his chest when the door flung open suddenly. Before 'Aelita' could react, a small girl rushed into the room, her face streaked with tears, and clutched the older female's leg, causing her to drop the dagger in surprise. The dagger hit the floor on its side, and it bounced harmlessly to a spot under the bed. 'Aelita' simply did not know what to do, and Jeremie was stirring once more as his body was being fully awakened. 'Aelita', basing her next movements on what human mothers did when their young child was crying, gently picked Antea up, and let her rest against her chest. Antea's crying lessened as she snuggled against her mother and fell asleep, the nightmares she had fading away into a distant memory.

'Aelita' felt something rest against one of her shoulders, and as she looked back, Jeremie have a tired smile before he curled up and fell asleep again. Antea snuggled unconsciously into 'Aelita', the latter softly rubbing the younger girl's back as a gesture of comfort. Antea's grip on the older female lessened as she curled up in her sleep. 'Aelita' looked at both Jeremie and Antea in wonder. '_Humans look so peaceful when they sleep'_, she thought, before shaking her head. '_Now is not the time to be thinking that. XANA?_' she thought, trying to communicate with her master, finding no thought or voices in her head that was sent from him. She would have panicked and tried multiple times to reach him, had it not have been for the feeling of separation, of which she did not know about, which now plagued her.

'_From where in the world do these feelings come from…_' she mused, confused on why she now had feelings or thoughts that deviated from her normal thoughts and functions. A thought had alarmed her recently and it continued to plague her whenever XANA was not dictating her motions or give her a set of instructions via the mental link she had with him. In a part of her artificial brain, she could feel herself secretly enjoying the time when XANA was not dictating things for her to do, though the thought of that secretly horrified her sometimes. Against all the routines and the subroutines which dictated her motions and her thoughts, she secretly savored being in this world instead of just being data and binary code, waiting for its fate to be determined by the person or program controlling it.

However, she hid those thoughts from XANA at all times, for an irrational fear had taken over her mind somehow that prevented her from normally displaying the irrational thoughts she had, in order for XANA to "correct" the "abnormal" mental functions he usually performed when there were thoughts that were contrary to his plans. 'Aelita' gently laid Antea next to her father as she continued watching them sleep peacefully, before sighing and going to sleep herself. Oddly enough for her, she soon entered an artificial world in her mind where anything could happen as soon as she was asleep. She had achieved something that specters or clones that XANA made had never been able to successfully achieve before- she was dreaming.

**-Antea and Waldo-**

Antea plucked at a few strands of her hair, the color it now displayed hardly satisfying her. The hair dye didn't work, so Waldo had to go under a guise of another person, and purchase several bottles of hair dye with money that he had to rummage around for. The hair dye did not work to the effect as much as both she and Waldo would have wanted, but it still did the job, nevertheless. The color of her hair was now dyed black, with an occasional bright red streak of hair as a positive highlight to an otherwise badly done hair dye job. Waldo had fared a little better, managing to dye his hair back to the dark black color that Antea remembered in their younger years.

Both of them surveyed the exterior of the abandoned cabin. It was a tiring ride to the mountains, but they had managed to reach the mountain cabin with hardly any trouble. The spring air had definitely done wonders to highlight the soft and flowing green grass that ticked at their feet- Waldo had chosen to take off his socks and shoes, and they had chosen to look back on the fonder memories as they experienced how wonderful spring was in the mountains. Antea, now about as old as her husband, could not remember so well, but enjoyed the fairly warm weather, however. A cool breeze ruffled both Antea and Waldo's hair, and they gave the mountain cabin another quick glance before nodding to each other and Waldo started putting his socks and shoes on, both of them getting ready to enter the cabin.

The front door of the cabin swung open with a loud groan- the hinges have not been oiled in decades since its abandonment. Waldo was grateful that he had not sold the mountain cabin at all- there was information there that was important to both of them. The floor was extremely dusty, and the cabin's interior was in shambles- papers strewn about on the floor, pieces of broken glass that seemingly had come from nowhere dimly glinting in the light, parts of the cabin looked like it was about to come crashing down at any moment, light hardly came through the windows, and there was a definite musty smell of age and of air not being circulated within a closed space. Through the light, though what little of it there was at the moment, there was the unmistakable growth of black mold, as well as other types of mold. The mold had grown from the moisture that was provided by a leakage of a pipe, which was due to the lack of maintenance on the building. The sparse furniture that had remained in the cabin, because it was too heavy for it to be moved to the Hermitage, was just about as dilapidated as the rest of the cabin, and signs of damage from weather and insects showed throughout the interior of the building.

Both Antea and Waldo coughed as dust from the surfaces of the objects remaining in the cabin found their way into their lungs. They continued coughing and sneezing violently, the air seemed to be getting thicker around them as more dust particles were stirred into the air again, until they both went out of the cabin to get some fresh air. Waldo cupped his hand and lightly hit Antea on the back, in order to help her rid her body of the foreign contaminants in her lungs. Antea coughed out the last of the dust from her respiratory system, nodding and thanking her husband as her breathing slowed down to normal again, taking one more look at the interior of the mountain cabin.

"It's probably just as bad as the Hermitage would have been right now, had not Aelita and Jeremie renovated it and used it as a summer home for their family." Waldo commented, still coughing a little from the dust particles.

"Unfortunately, it is." Antea affirmed, sighing. "We need to get the thing we need and get out before we die there."  
"I am not pleased to say that we cannot just do that- the item might have been to damaged to function correctly, and we don't have a place to hide in- the Hermitage is too far from here, and my daughter would have known to put in a lock too complex for a person even at my skill level to break it open."

"… so we're going to have to do some home rebuilding… I was afraid you were going to say that."

"The problem is that the whole structure is greatly weakened- it might take months or a year or two to fully replace all the rotting wood and basically rebuild the house." Waldo said, sighing as he knew the difficult task that lay ahead.

Antea rested a hand on his shoulder as a sign of comfort, and Waldo gave a grim smile to his ever-aging wife. Both of them were not as young as they used to be, and they could not get any outside help, for there was always a chance that the person re-building their home might see through the little disguises they had and report them to the government. Waldo knew that his strength would soon be all but gone, and that he was not a scientist, and not a person that would be out trying to build muscles. The gears in his head were now spinning at a pace that was deemed to be fast to the normal human being, but it was too slow for a man that was used to have thoughts and solutions to complex formulas come to him at a lightening pace. Within moments, Waldo had found a way to reverse their age back to around their young 30s, something that most scientists would have dismissed as impossible. For a man that built a supercomputer that could convert large masses of matter into atomic particles and store it into the computer system however, hardly anything was impossible.

**Jeremie and 'Aelita'**

Jeremie plucked at the grass under himself as he watched his children run with each other near the picnic site. It had been the children's idea, in fact, that the family will have a picnic outdoors in the park after both of the parents had gotten back from work. Both of the parents had managed to convince Alexis, their manager, to let them off earlier from work, so they could spend quality time with their children. 'Aelita' quietly observed both Antea and Waldo's nature as both of them fell to the ground and immediately started play-wrestling with each other. '_It's fascinating how children can make fighting seem so childish. Then again, men are always like little children when it comes to fighting- no matter how big or small the war or battle is- they always end up sulking if they lose…_' she thought, taking a bite of her sandwich without knowing it. Humans were always fascinating to her, and there was not a day where she observed something and discovered another thing that ran contrary to her master's viewpoint on what the humans did in the past, and what they do in the present.

The sun set down on the family as they continued to express happy feelings- something that 'Aelita' rarely felt, and was ecstatic to participate in. The children's features became darkened as the light from the sun faded away, the lights from the streetlights not having any effect on the family, as they were too far away from them for the streetlights to effectively shine on the small group. 'Aelita's' thoughts were interrupted as Jeremie laid his hand on her shoulder, much like what he had done last night when Antea came into their bedroom. Jeremie was smiling as his face came closer; his eyes were twinkling in the fading light. Before 'Aelita' had any rational thought, Jeremie pressed his lips against her lips in a kiss as he hugged her, leaving her stunned.

Her routines and the programming in her system had no information on what to do in this type of situation as Jeremie continued to kiss her- something else taking over her as he continued. By the reaction a human might call an instinct; 'Aelita' found herself kissing him back, Jeremie deepening the kiss. None of the children noticed their parents show affection to each other; they were too busy arguing over who had successfully pinned the other to the ground and won the match, starting another wrestling match in the progress. Jeremie pulled back slowly, looking at 'Aelita's' dazed face, all logical thought was evidently vaporized from her mind as he performed a kiss. Jeremie knew that he was kissing a clone, but he just wanted to know if there was any chance that there might be any chance that the clone would make any attempts to kill him for a few days at most. Judging by the clone's expression, Jeremie gave a smile, to which it looked like he was happy. '_It's quite ironic._' Jeremie thought, gazing into the clone's eyes. '_I suppose it's to get back at XANA for his attack in which he kissed… Aelita… A kiss for a kiss- they're both being to betray or to deceive someone._'

'_So… so this is what it's like to be loved…_' 'Aelita' reasoned, having the thought as she held Jeremie's hands in hers. The simple thought filled her with emotions that any other of XANA's specters would have been able to feel. She had been made to be different- to be equipped with some of the basic emotions, the purpose being that she would be able to look and act similarly to the person she was pretending to be. '_Master is incapable of feeling love… It's wonderful… I wonder why he hasn't felt this way_' she wondered, lightly rubbing her head against him. His response was to lightly stroke the back of her head as the light completely faded over the ends of the Earth, 'Aelita' feeling more and more loved as he continued. The setting sun just signified the impeding start of a new day- a day that would never end.

**[This is not] The End**


	2. Chapter II

**Code: Apocalypse II**

Data streams flew all over the screen of a digital interface hovering several feet off the ground as the person operating it peered at it to detect any possible defects. The eyes followed the streams before sending the data to the recipient server, the data uploading to the receiver with hardly any issues. Fingernails, which were sharpened into claws, tapped impatiently on the interface, hardened green eyes glowing with a red tint glaring at the interface. The data bar slowly moved to '100.00', and the sender gave a satisfied smirk before closing the laptop and pushing her hair out of her eyes. They were going to be created soon, based on the data stored in the supercomputer that Jeremie had forgotten to erase before it was shut down. Now, they were going to pay for that mistake, much like Waldo Schaeffer would pay for creating her master. A clawed hand brushed against the steel desk of a building that she had been translated into. However, there was a difference in her translation, as an error had occurred during her translation, and there wasn't a way that her master could transmit her back to the host location where her master was currently based in.

The clawed hand hit a syringe filled with a whitish fluid, which rolled for a small distance before the clawed hand stopped it. Aelita gave it a strange look before finally remembering what it was filled with, and gingerly picked it up. Flicking away the darkened version of her outfit from Lyoko, Aelita carefully adjusted the syringe, and expressing distaste, pricked her skin with the needle before pushing on the plunger, its contents emptying into her bloodstream. Almost instantly, her claws grew another inch, and a sense of unquenchable rage and power was input into her system. Growling at the effects and brushing away the pink hair that was now darkened to an almost reddish color, Aelita took a moment to lightly scratch at her ear to give a sort-of calming effect to deal with the pain tearing at her insides from the syringe fluid before continuing on, opening the laptop again and receiving the encoded information sent by her master. It was the full schematics and the layout of the information copied and stolen from the supercomputer yesterday. Aelita allowed herself a grin, her teeth shaped into sharp fang-like structures instead of what normal teeth human teeth would appear.

There were certain advantages to be stuck in a laboratory, especially an abandoned one with most of the highly technologically advanced machines still there. For one, she could conduct studies and experiments on her own, maybe dismantle a machine if there were more like them, and examine the parts before attempting to put it back together on her own. Just a few hours ago, she managed to dismantle several machines in storage and put them back together as a fearsome guard droid, which could use itself as a weapon if it needed to, with electrical weapons hidden over its metallic body. The droid now stood beside her, nearly being as tall as her with multiple sensors to detect and track movements, whenever the case needed it. A black 'Eye of XANA' was embossed onto its front, the droid proudly displaying it for all those who cared to see.

A door behind her swooshed open, and several of the robots that XANA had manufactured marched in, having been secretly shipped to this location from its resting place in Serbia. It was complicated getting them here, as it took quite a bit of hacking to sneak hundreds of robots past the scanners the humans had devised to keep terror weapons and anything that could be considered dangerous to the world. The robots needed some of their components changed and replaced, due to metal fatigue and rusting, but they were fully operational now, with some improvements made to them to make them even more deadly than before.

Aelita nodded to the small squadron of robots before downloading the information to the laptop that she managed to find after rummaging around in the forest lab base, and followed the squadron of robots to the central chamber, her droid following behind her. Doors after door they passed, each silently swishing open for them with a little gust of air, and cameras were following their movements before stopping as they recognized the objects passing before them. Aelita and the small squadron of robots stopped before a large, thick metal door that loomed over them silently, the mere appearance of the door radiating a sense of power and of a feeling that it was protecting something inside. Aelita merely raised her hand to the door, and concentrated her power towards to metal door, the white 'Eye of XANA' that was superimposed upon her forehead pulsing as she focused. Electricity flickered across the display nearby the door, the red light on top of the keypad turning into green before Aelita relaxed again, her power of creativity ebbing away as the door opened. With a smirk, Aelita entered the room with the robots tailing behind her, the door swishing closed after they had entered.

-Antea and Waldo-

Sweat fell in droplets as Antea grunted and pulled with a crowbar at the wooden framing of the cabin. The piece of wood that was being pulled away from the wall came off with a loud creak before falling onto the ground noisily with a crack that resounded through the now-empty interior of the cabin. She picked up the wooden frame piece with much disgust, as mold had grown all over it, the wood turning into a blackish color as black mold had spread throughout the household. Antea broke the wood into two pieces- a feat much easier since it was rotting- and threw it out the window, the panes of glass completely gone. Coughing, Antea pulled her tattered shirt to her nose and mouth in an attempt to keep from completely suffocating from the scent of ammonia that they had poured over the interior to take out the musty odor that had profusely filled the cabin. Antea, not being able to take the strong scent of decay mixed with chemicals, stepped outside in her makeshift shoes- made from large pieces of bark strung with tied pieces of string.

Waldo was busy holding the intact glass beakers and tubes that he had retrieved from the basement. He was muttering to himself and adding chemicals from one tube to another, the mixtures touched each other and turned into a bright purple color before fading to a darker purple. Waldo looked at it, almost uncertainly, before he drank it, shuddering as the liquid made its way down his throat. He went into a coughing fit- the liquid was burning his insides, the unbearable pain shredding his willpower as it continued to make its way down his body to seep into his bloodstream. After a few moments of agonizing pain, Waldo brushed the sweat forming on his forehead, and looked at his hand, gasping in surprise.

Before his very eyes, his hand was changing from his normal rough and calloused ones to a softer version of itself, the folds of skin disappearing as his body began to age back. Waldo nearly leapt with excitement at his discovery and immediately tried to break a piece of wood in his hands. The wood broke in half much easier than he was able to before he had drank the potion, much to his amazement. Waldo wanted to jump right there and show his wife the effects of the potion, but he knew that he had to concoct a similar potion to the one he had just drank, though Waldo wanted to make sure that it had to be easier on the throat as it went down. Giddily rubbing his hands together in excitement despite his nature, he continued to experiment with the chemicals laid in front of him.

-Ulrich-

Ulrich yawned as he went back to his house, carrying several bags of groceries that he had just recently purchased from the grocery store downtown. It was the third trip this week, and Ulrich was about to kick Odd and his wife, Sissi, out from his house, as Odd's stomach was never exactly full, and there was the fact that he kept eating, sweetly ignoring the fact that food costs a lot. There was also that he and his wife Yumi weren't exactly the richest couple on the block. Sure, they could borrow money from Jeremie and Aelita, to help pay for the cost of groceries, but Ulrich was too proud to even ask for a Euro. However, this time, Ulrich had gotten smart, and had bought the things he knew Odd would never eat- basically some whole grains and vegetables.

Sighing in exasperation, Ulrich fished around in his pocket and found a small, bronze-colored key, which he inserted into the lock. When he opened the door, Ulrich groaned and covered his ears to block out the loud music after putting the groceries down on the floor and shutting the door. It turned out that Odd had somehow gotten the idea of having a party in his house while he was out shopping for groceries. Ulrich sighed, and quickly spotted Odd, drinking soda and dancing to Ulrich's music selection he blared throughout the house. Yumi was less than thrilled at Odd's attempt at his amusement, and tried to move out of the room, only to find herself being deafened by the music at every point in the house. She finally just gave up and resigned herself to slouch on the sofa on her stomach, looking out of the window in a bored manner. Sissi wasn't too pleased with her husband's behavior, and looked like she was ready to call it quits and divorce him, due to his antics.

Ulrich knew that the neighbors would complain soon, knowing how close the buildings were to each other in France. Ulrich put his pointer fingers in his ears and moved towards the stereo, finally being able to turn it down to more bearable levels. Odd had stopped dancing, and now glared at him, before realizing that he had just come home from the grocery store. Odd immediately started rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment, trying to squeeze out an excuse or reason to why he was doing this. Ulrich stared patiently at Odd, his foot tapping on the hardwood floor in an ominous manner. Odd noticed this, and swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing as he did so.

"Look, if you want to party, I bet Aelita and Jeremie would be able to accommodate you. At least they live farther away from other people, so their kids can make all the noise they want." Ulrich blatantly stated, staring at Odd dead in the eyes.  
"Cool, can I go there now?" Odd excitedly said, as he thought of having a house party in their house when they were away.  
"I'm not so sure they want a parasite to be living off of them."  
"I'm not a parasite!" Odd stated defensively, crossing his arms in front of his chest.  
"Oh, really?" Ulrich questioned, raising an eyebrow. "Then how come I have to purchase more groceries every other day because you have food cravings all the time? I can't blame you- it's not your house or your money being spent to refurnish the refrigerator."

Odd opened his mouth to retaliate before closing again, finding no argument to counteract Ulrich's logic.

It wasn't his fault that he had not outgrown his love of food that he had when he was a teenager, and it certainly was not his fault that he loved staying in Ulrich and Yumi's house for their acute selection of food that he happened to coincidentally like. Ulrich was about to punch Odd for basically having a party and trashing their house when his cell phone rang. Giving Odd a 'you're lucky I have to take this call' glare, Ulrich picked up his cell phone and looked at the caller ID, recognizing Jeremie's number. He flipped open the phone, and heard Jeremie whispering quietly to him, almost like a spy would do.

"Ulrich, can I talk to you?" Jeremie asked, his voice barely audible. "It's about you-know-who."  
"Sure Jeremie, just speak louder, okay? I'm not sure if you really want to talk about Odd at the moment- he has gotten me angry enough as it is." Ulrich plainly stated, shooting Odd another glare.  
"No, it's not our favorite eating machine." Jeremie whispered more loudly, Ulrich snorting after Jeremie had said 'favorite'. "It's about Aelita… you see, XANA has managed to-"  
"You're telling me that we have to risk our lives again?" Ulrich nearly yelled into the receiver. "Fine… What did Princess do this time?" Ulrich sighed, lightly pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and his pointer finger.  
"It's not much as what Aelita did… it's what XANA did." Jeremie patiently explained. "You see, XANA had managed to alter its code before it could be destroyed, and … well, Aelita's not here anymore."  
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down here, Einstein. You're telling me that Aelita's dead?" Ulrich questioned, earning strange looks from the occupants in the room.  
"She's not dead… just under XANA's control. You know, like what happened to William, only that she didn't destroy the core of Lyoko."  
"Let me guess, now we have to fight alone- just the four of us?" Ulrich asked, fearing the answer.  
"Actually…" Jeremie replied, pausing to choose his words carefully. "You see, we have another two people on our side. They're Aelita's parents, in fact. Just imagine two more geniuses to help us coordinate ourselves and to help take down XANA."  
"You're kidding me- Franz Hopper is alive… and so is Aelita's mom?" Ulrich incredulously asked, his expressions mirroring those of in the room, except for Sissi's expression, as she did not know about Lyoko or the importance of Aelita's parents.  
"Yes, Ulrich, they're alive. Fra- I mean, Mr. Schaeffer just called my cell-phone and told me had found Mrs. Schaffer. I gave him my number, just in case, when we had met up a few days ago."  
"Awesome…"  
"Yeah, but the problem is that we have to get Aelita back and stop XANA." Jeremie said, dropping his voice to a near whisper again. "…and XANA sent a clone that tried to kill me last night, so I have to be careful around her."  
"Alright, me, Yumi, and Odd will be at your house in a few moments." Ulrich said, closing the link.  
"What about me?" Sissi whined.  
"Sissi, we need you to remain safe." Yumi replied uncertainly. "We need you to stay here and not get hurt."  
"I want to know about all of this business, now!" Sissi yelled.  
"Sissi…" Odd softly said, comforting her by holding her hand. "I want you to remain safe, so we can finally live alone, just the two of us. We can then have the girl you always wanted- the one you wanted to shower with affection and gifts. …and… and… and we could have it all. We could have a house nearby the French coast, with the seagulls calling out as if they were crying your name, and with the sand, oh the sand, all for yourself. Just please…" Odd faintly said, grasping Sissi's hand tighter. "Just promise me you will stay safe and remain here."  
"Oh, Odd, I could never say no to you!" Sissi cried, squeezing his hand so hard that his hand became numb.  
"Can you fill Odd and me in?" Yumi quietly asked to Ulrich as this was going on.  
"Sure, but we need to get Sissi out of the house first." Ulrich whispered back. "You know how snoopy she was as a teen. Chances are, she's still a snoop now."

Yumi nodded and left the room with Ulrich, leaving behind Odd and a sobbing Sissi in the room as the music continued to play from the speakers. '_XANA has risen again, but so have the Lyoko Warriors_' Ulrich thought, heading upstairs before remembering the groceries and putting them away. '_XANA just made a mistake coming back up from whatever hole he had hidden in. He better be ready for the heat, because I'm not going to deal with him that easily anymore_', he thought.

**[Still not] The End**

**-Questions and Answers-**

**Q. **Commando, you said that Aelita had turned on the supercomputer in TX. Why was the supercomputer reverted back to normal in the last chapter (under the coverings).

**A. **In this fanfiction,the supercomputer's gears were too old (due to rust and years of non-use) for the switch to remain in the position, so it switched to the "off" position, making the supercomputer turn off again. Once again, it reverted back to its state that the Lyoko Warriors had left it in "Echoes".

**Q. **What's up with not leaving Author's notes anymore?

**A. **I don't feel like there is anything to explain here. If there was, I would put a Q and A segment very much like this one.

**Q. **How long does it take you to write a story or a chapter?

**A. **That depends on two factors- the length of the fanfiction chapter or story in question, and the amount of motivation I have to update it. I often write about 2,000 words per chapter, in order to satisfy the audience, 3,000 or more words if the story or chapter is long overdue.


	3. Chapter III

I watched the pages fluttering in the wind, each of them flapping like the wings of birds, wreathed with fire as they disintegrated into nothing more than ashes, which silently fell like snow in a world where everything is upside-down.

**Code: Apocalypse: Chapter III**

A clawed finger gently traced the glass tube, making a small impression on the otherwise foggy glass. Most, if not all of them were still asleep, and they were still not ready to be released upon the world to cause destruction and mayhem. Not bothering to fully clear the glass tubes from the fog that covered the glass tubes, XANA-Aelita glanced at the readout on the digital interface provided by the laptop. The data scrolling in the window would have been a completely different language to most people, but the data contained the information needed to create them- since manually forming them with specters would have been too troublesome. They weren't exactly made from either organic or digital matter- they were rather a combination of them, a fusion that had not been easy to create either. There was the matter of the DNA combination and how the digital matter would have to take place of some of the matter in the DNA without fully destroying it, otherwise the transcription of the DNA would never take place, and the experiment would end in a failure. It would either be in a genetic defect that would prove the experiment too useless or deformed to be of any good use to XANA, or they would suffer other defects as well.

The clawed finger pulled away, the arm retreating back to its owner's side. '_How unfortunate the world would be when they are ready to be awakened_' Aelita thought. Her hand lightly rubbed against the glass case once more, rubbing away some of the fog to reveal its occupant. Aelita sighed, and looked in the glass, which revealed a small shape curled into a ball. The experiments… these things growing inside of these tubes… Although they certainly didn't look deadly, they would be when they were fully grown, and then could Code: Apocalypse fully be initiated. Only then would they be trained and then released in the hundreds to destroy a large city nearby as a test run. Behind the numerical percentage of success, there was a still a shadow of a doubt residing behind her mind.

Although XANA, in a sense, had taken over her mind and was able to control all of her motor functions at the moment, he could not fully control her mental functions, and that included the thoughts. XANA wasn't pleased that he could not fully contain Aelita's mental attempts of freedom- it was almost impossible to control one's mental self while most of the energy was directed to controlling the physical self. He knew that somewhere, Aelita's conscious self was waiting until there was a gap in his possession, and then choose that moment to fully strike. Despite his best attempts, XANA knew that Aelita's conscious self was gaining power, as well as gaining traction and slowly regaining some of her physical self's willpower and ability to resist his influence. It was annoying in a way, but each time, XANA was able to repel the conscious's self mental assault and make her submit for the time being.

XANA-Aelita furrowed her brows and her eyes glinted angrily at something that was now going on. The infernal pest, the mental part of the free Aelita, was attacking again, struggling with every ounce of willpower left in an attempt at freedom. Aelita roared in what seemed more animalistic than human, and fought to remain in control. Minutes ticked by, and the battle was slowly being lost for the remaining part of Aelita that XANA was never able to control. Once XANA-Aelita was sure the mental part of herself was back into the recesses of the mind, it was only then did she stop her assault, but still remained on guard for any further attacks. A chime echoed throughout the vast room, and Aelita looked behind her, one of the robots standing in the doorway silently. XANA-Aelita stared at it for a moment, before following it to the control center, where XANA had spotted something unusual during his routine scans of the Earth.

The control center had numerous panels, as well as technologically advanced satellite and monitoring systems. One of the robots working in the center had found something that XANA did not expect to find while he was searching for the best place to invade first. On one of the screens, it had a still of the people XANA never expected to see again- Waldo Franz Schaeffer and his wife. Instantly, after looking at them, Aelita quietly jerked in a strange manner, and softened eyes that were nearly brimming with tears in the lapse of control XANA had due to the strong memories associated with her father and mother before it was replaced with the hardened expression once more. Glaring down at the still frame, Aelita resumed the feed that had been captured by a satellite orbiting at the moment, and saw both of them doing something in the skeletal remains of her childhood home.

Both of them looked as young as Aelita remembered them strangely enough, and they looked like they were busy rebuilding the mountain cabin. Aelita blinked again, looking at their expressions and at their efforts, which had proved fruitful due to their perseverance. Although the labor was hard and monumental tasks were laid out before them, both of them were smiling about something, like they were two old buddies sharing a couple of jokes with each other… but what was it? The ghost of their troubles seemed so far away from them at the moment, and it seemed like they were the only people on the Earth, content on building a shelter to house themselves from the brutality of the world. Aelita turned and walked back into the chamber, being careful enough so the robots that constantly patrolled the corridors and rooms of the abandoned laboratory would never see the water that fell from her eyes as she started re-living her memories once more.

_Why have you forsaken me?_

**Group**

"Aw, come on Jeremie! We could just get a weapon, pose in a cool manner as we're reloading the firearm, and say 'lock 'n load, baby!' It'll look cool, and we could then just crash into wherever XANA's hiding in one of those big trucks, and jump out into poses as loud explosions occur behind us!" Odd excitedly yelled, waving his hands up and down as he spoke.  
"This isn't an action movie, Odd" Jeremie grumbled. "Anyway, Mr. Man-of-Action, where will we get the funds to get actual weapons and an explosion?"  
"Well, we can always-"  
"No, Odd" Ulrich mumbled in a bored manner, lounging on one of the couches in Jeremie's living room.

Odd pouted and crossed his hands, leaning against the leather covering of the sofa, sulking at his idea being shot down. Ulrich merely shrugged and took another sip of his drink, slightly gagging at the bitterness of the coffee. Yumi wasn't really paying attention to the conversation, as she had been stationed as a lookout in case 'Aelita' came back early from running an errand in town. Spotting the small car coming up the road, she quickly gave a shrill whistle that pierced through the air and shattered the silence that the others shared with each other. Panicking, they started whispering fiercely to each other, wondering what to do at the moment she stepped through the door and saw them.

Jeremie panicked momentarily before resigning himself to fate that 'Aelita' would come in at any moment, instead shrugging nonchalantly and motioning with his hand for them to relax. Jeremie gave them a quick look over, made sure they didn't look too suspicious before fixing a drink of hot tea, which he hoped would look normal enough not to be considered a suspicious figure. 'Aelita', who came in moments later holding several items, gave Jeremie a weird look that plainly said that she was noting his strange tense behavior when she walked by before realizing what he was doing and shrugging, leaving to put the items she was carrying away. Chalking it up as normal behavior due to the stresses of human life, she didn't question him about it, instead resuming the normal routines defined by how the household usually ran through her head. Opening the refrigerator, she slowly blinked before quirking one of her eyebrows in a questioning look.

" … Jeremie? How come the Fridge is empty?" she asked, Ulrich groaning lightly as she said it, realizing what Odd had done.

**Later…**

"… What does that mean, Jeremie?" as 'Aelita' puzzled over what Jeremie was writing.  
"S'envoler…" Jeremie murmured, inking the words onto the back of her hand with a pen. "It means 'to fly away', if you want to translate it into English."  
"I want to fly away some day… just break away from everything and… be free…" she murmured, watching as Jeremie continued to carefully re-trace the pen on the back of her hand over the word, adding a more detail as he broadened the letters.  
"I don't usually tattoo stuff on the back of people's hands, but I guess some people do it for art, but only with regular ballpoint pen, so that each drawing is special, as each of them are only temporary. …Think of it as an artist's print, only that the artist and some people around them can enjoy it, so it's a rare piece of artwork, because the artist only made one of that kind of artwork." Jeremie explained as he finished the 'R' of the word.

'Aelita' withdrew her hand once he was done putting another layer of ink on the letters, and flexed it, her fingers curling into a fist before uncurling again. It was fascinating how the wording bent and flexed with her muscles, the angel wings at the ends of the word seemingly fluttering slightly up and down as her fist clenched and unclenched. 'Aelita', fascinated with how this could be, ignored the logic and reasoning that was stored in a database somewhere in her, choosing instead to learn on her own about the world.

At times, she questioned whether this was rebellious behavior, ignoring the information XANA would send her on the specific topic, choosing instead to be fascinated with the world. It was simply amazing to learn something on one's own, instead of having one tell you about it. All the natural expressions and reactions to things, the feelings one has when they find out more about the world they live in. Just like Aelita, when she was first materialized out of Lyoko, the specter cared to learn things that it thought was fascinating, like how the body reacted against invading pathogens, and the ways that the mysterious illnesses worked, and what virus or bacteria caused it.

The living organisms' defense system and how it worked made the specter often wonder whether she was a virus as well, as it was basically an invader coming onto another person's territory and fooling the defense systems. Then there was the other fact that she was basically a virus herself, an extension of the will of an artificial intelligence that infected things to do nefarious deeds. Scientists never figured out what the purpose of viruses were except for the virus' need to destroy, reproduce and endure as long as they can by tricking the host cell into making copies of them. Such a thought made 'Aelita' sad, often making her wonder at night whether she was worth nothing, and was nothing but a pathogen to merely carry out the instructions embedded within itself to destroy and deceive.

"Aelita…" A voice whispered in her ear, the soft voice resounding in her head.  
"Who… who said that?" 'Aelita', asked turning her head around to look at the occupants of the home, utterly bemused on who it was, as it was not the voice that XANA chose to use when communicating with her.  
"Who said what, princess?" Ulrich asked, slightly wondering if the clone was trying to catch them off guard, and then kill them when they were not looking.  
"…Someone said my name…" 'Aelita' muttered, still looking around the room.  
"Aelita, there's nobody here but us…" Jeremie replied, sharing almost the same thought as Ulrich, except he thought that the clone was playing dumb.  
"We'll talk again later" the voice whispered again, leaving the specter to wonder if the systems for the proper functioning were acting up again.

**Waldo and Antea**

Waldo gazed sadly upon the relic of the past, staring at its horribly disfigured form as it lay on the dusty floor, as if it were a once living thing that had died, taking all the beauty it once had with it. The piano's legs had rotten away long ago, the body of the grand piano crashing with what was probably a tremendous thud and the horrible sounds of a dying piano as it fell, the wood weakened enough to be unable to support the heavy instrument anymore. The normally white keys were blackened with time and from the lack of being maintained; the black cover of the piano was nowhere to be found in the surrounding area, which was because it was probably destroyed as time passed as well. Some keys were pulled up; others were broken and lying on the top of the rest of the keys. Waldo looked down upon what was once one of the pianos he taught his daughter with and could not let out a small sigh. Vandals probably came into their home earlier in the years of the home's owners' absence, along with some arsonists, judging by the way most of the things in the household were damaged in some sort of way. Some parts of the house were burnt, including some of the furniture that used to stand out in its elegance. Waldo was thankful that the groups that had come through the home had not destroyed the most important parts of his way to shut down XANA as he stared upon the piano.

Suddenly curious, his hands gravitated towards the keys, and he depressed them, surprised when the piano still made a note, though it was all but drowned from the years of no tuning, non-maintenance and disuse. The muffled note made a soft noise, and Waldo started to play part of his favorite song on the piano as a test run to see how the piano performed, the song in question being 12 Variations. The notes of the piano were still slightly audible in between the sounds Antea's war against the microorganisms that infested the household, though some notes played sharper and louder than others. Sometimes the keys stuck a little, and caused an irritating pause for the professional piano player, which required him to jiggle the keys a little until he was able to press them down, or they plainly wouldn't be depressed no matter what Waldo tried. Some keys had broken off during Waldo's playing, leaving him to sigh in disbelief and skip the part of the song which contained those notes.

Waldo moved an octave higher, and started to play the prelude the 12 Variations, the two lines of notes he memorized playing in his head as memories and visions of the past. His fingers danced over the white keys, the unturned piano making slightly off-key noises when he depressed some keys. Antea soon came over to where he was playing and looked behind her to see the chair that she had sat in while she enjoyed her husband's musical performances a long time ago. She sighed as well, and continued to throw out the rotted wood after breaking it into smaller pieces. Though the song itself was nice, it seemed as if it was a rendition of a song playing out their miseries, instead of what it was supposed to come off as to its listeners.

The song stopped abruptly, as Waldo couldn't continue to the first variations because the piano had simply stopped making sounds that were deemed to be within his levels of expectations. Waldo continued to stare at the piano, silently and thoughtfully thinking for a while. Antea knew that the piano held too many memories for them to simply throw it away, and Waldo thought the same thing, thinking over the bittersweet moments with his daughter when everything was simple, and there was no fear of the government trying to interfere with their life. Now it seemed like everything was going wrong in their life as their living spiraled rapidly downwards into a series of more than unfortunate occurrences. It only seemed that though it was about twenty years ago, he was sitting next to his daughter, teaching her his favorite song by Mozart. That particular memory played over and over ago in his mind, the memory making the scene seem as if it were yesterday, that he was playing piano with her while his wife smiled and sipped her hot chocolate in the background. It made him wonder if their life was going to be ever the same again.

End of Chapter

AN: Waldo did have a black Grand Piano, as shown in XANA's Simulation Bubble Replica of the Mountain Cabin. This piano is not to be confused with the upright one that used to be in the Hermitage. What happened to the piano in the Hermitage is a mystery, though it was most likely destroyed with time or by other means.


	4. Chapter IV

**Code Apocalypse: Chapter IV**

**William Dunbar**

He roamed the streets, long dark hair flipped in front of his face as he continued to walk in a sort of a defeated manner of men aged before their time. William Dunbar, now nearing his twenty-seventh birthday, roamed the streets, an empty bottle in hand. A dark, almost ominous looking house stood facing the street, the lawn littered with papers strewn all over the place, and there were some empty bottles that probably came from the teenagers living across the street. William half sighed, half groaned, as he picked up a bottle after another bottle and chucked them into the recycling bin outside of his home. The senior college students that lived off-campus across the street were partying all the time, and it was really getting to his nerves. He couldn't really sleep due to the loud music they were pumping through the speakers almost every night, and after every loud party, there were bottles littering the yards surrounding the home that the party was hosted at.

William growled in anger as he chucked the last bottle in the bin, slowly trudging to his home. Flinging the door open, he barely acknowledged the mountain of papers and items that had been steadily growing in his abode for a long time now as he kicked the door closed behind him. Riffling through the fridge in his small kitchen and finding nothing to his liking, he returned to the family room and plopped down onto the couch in a defeated manner, letting loose a loud belch to break the silence. It wasn't his intention to barely get by, and having a somewhat mediocre job after nearly failing college. William had dreamed of being with a companion in which he could put his trust and love into, with a nice home, and kids even, but those hopes were long crushed. The woman he loved had married years before, and he could not find any other person that fit the description of his love interest as much as Yumi did.

William allowed himself a chuckle. It was ironic that love, though considered to be one of the sweetest things in the world, it was also a thing that could also hurt so much, and it could drove people crazy, insane even. He couldn't understand why people would search all over the place for love, for that one person who compliments them. Sometimes it could take forever, and they could die with a broken heart, not being able to find who they were looking for, or it could be accidental, like how he supposed Jeremie and Aelita met. Love one of the things that used to keep him as energized as that rabbit on one of the American commercials, but now his heart was completely devoid of love, and so he regressed into his miserable state, with hardly anything to get by nowadays. Times were getting tougher than ever, and he knew it. He doubted that he could keep this house any longer, much less make enough money to get a decent meal now and then.

A musical ring tone broke his train of thoughts and he reached into his back pocket and took out a phone. He snorted when he saw the number, reliving the memories temporarily until his small, dark colored Virgin Mobile cell phone rang again, the caller number still appearing on the screen. William hesitated for a moment, but picked it up after winning the battle over himself.

"What do you want?" he all but snarled into the receiver.  
"We need some assistance with something" the voice coolly replied from the other end.  
"What makes you think I'll be able to help you? I had the payments on my car defaulted and pretty soon my house is going to go too."  
"Calm down. Either me or my husband will pick you up."  
"You ran off with that Stern kid, and you're asking for my help? Forget it!" William snarled again as he reached for the red button that would end the call.  
"… I wouldn't call you about this unless it was of a grave matter" Yumi replied.  
"What kind of matter…?" William asked, curious as his hand slowly dropped to his side.  
"XANA" was all that Yumi said before William dropped the cell phone, the small object clattering to the floor with a soft thud as William looked out the window in disbelief.

**Yumi and Group**

Yumi heard the obvious anger evident in his voice, and how his words were tipped in venom and respite from loathing over the years. Although she didn't find it to be totally her fault that he had grown surly and sort-of violent with age, she could not help but feel a twinge of regret from not keeping in contact with him more frequently over the years. As she said the word 'XANA', she could hear a clattering sound, which was most likely the sound of his cell phone dropping in his disbelief. The next few seconds contained nothing but silence before she heard the sound of heavy breathing again before William spoke again, his tone slightly desperate.

"I sure hope you're joking, Yumi, because I'm definitely not going to be sticking my head out to be a slave for that monster again."  
"Please, William."  
"No, and that's final. I don't want to risk the safety of the world again."  
"Please…"  
"No!" He yelled. "Why won't you understand this?"  
"Because, I'm still the girl that's as stubborn as the day you first met me."  
"Yumi…" He whispered; his tone now more apologetic than angry now.  
"Listen, Earth is in a terrifying crisis, and I'm sucking up every ounce of my pride to call you. We're doomed, so either get your butt here and fight, or be one of the bystanders watching their world come to an end."  
"Yumi, listen…"  
"No, listen to me, William." Yumi angrily yelled into her phone. "I have nothing more to say to you. I would have thought you were a bigger man that you were when you first came to Lyoko, but it seems I have been sadly mistaken to have thought a person that was willing to fight when the world was in danger would have called it quits, and lived in a dump after nearly flunking out of school. Goodbye."

With that final biting remark, the line went dead as Yumi hung up on him. She could almost have imagined him drop the phone once again from where he was and sit somewhere, with his head in his hands. Yumi sighed after her angry outburst and shoved her phone back into her pocket, the small device making a sharp chirping noise before self-deactivating until it was going to be used again. She turned to look at the others, who were curiously watching her and waiting for her response on the situation. It was not their wholly agreed on idea to have called upon him as the first of the people they would ask for help in combating XANA, though they were desperate for people to help them in their endeavor to finally combat XANA for good.

"Don't bet on William to come to the rescue" Yumi spat; rage still boiling inside because of William's self-pity. "He thinks not helping out would be better than getting himself possessed again simply by declaring war on XANA."  
"What he doesn't realize is that he has a better immunity to XANA than the rest of us, since he had dealt with XANA's possession longer than we all have. Logically, his body would have made a natural defense by now to XANA, since it is probable that his body would have recognized the virus and expelled it out of his system, and would have not accepted XANA if XANA would choose to attempt to possess him again." Jeremie explained, getting confused looks from everyone in the room. "In other words, he has a bigger resistance to XANA from being possessed for a long time" Jeremie clarified, getting 'oh's from all over the room.  
"Yumi, neither of us likes William, but you've got to give him a break. After all, most of us here know what it's been like to be possessed by XANA… the feeling of the lack of control and the helplessness to do anything…" said Ulrich, gently taking Yumi's hands in his.  
"I know Ulrich… but it just frustrates me is that all his fight is gone… it's like he has no will to live, and I'm trying to get him to wake up!" Yumi yelled as she finished.  
"Then it's 'Go us' time…" Odd began. "We're going to have to fight as a five man band once again, with probably no help from the government or from armed forces…"  
"… because who's going to believe a bunch of adults yelling their head off about an evil maniacal Artificial Intelligence that practically thrives in misery and the planning of humanity's downfall." Jeremie finished with a light chuckle before stopping, realizing there was no humor in the situation.  
"Yeah, they'll probably think we're crazy, or we're doing a crazy stint, like in the Terminator movies." Odd quietly replied with a hint of a laugh.

All five of them stood quietly in the silence, pondering upon the upcoming battle that lay ahead. All they knew was that they were certainly in for the ride now, and there was no way of them getting out of it in the end. The light coming through the window cast shadows upon the troubled looks on their faces, some more particular than others. Brows were creased in worry, and their faces were lightly crested with the troubles that seemed to multiply before their eyes. With the exception of the Aelita clone, they had no idea where XANA's new base was located, and they were busy keeping an eye out for the clone, to make sure she did not do anything while their backs were turned.

It was again that 'Aelita' pondered upon the loyalty needed towards her master, and debated on whether to betray him, or to go with his orders and kill the rest of the original Lyoko Warriors in the dead of night, just as a reassurance that the rest of humanity would have no way of knowing how to stop him. She knew that their skills had probably been increased over the years, both Ulrich and Yumi having the speed of a Cheetah and reflexes quick enough to nearly dodge all attacks sent towards them. Odd looked like he was flexible enough to be of great help during high pressure situations, and Jeremie's skills had been increased exponentially over the years, with different situations hardening him into a genius that could compute equations faster than he could do as a mere child. All in all, the rest of the Lyoko Warriors looked as if they were ready to take down XANA once again, but this time for good. 'They would need all of their hardened skills over the years', she mused glancing at them as one of them straightened suddenly, flashed a grin, and flexed his muscles.

"Team Lyoko, let's go! Team Lyoko, let's go!" Odd slowly chanted, his voice rising as the others straightened up as well, and joined him.  
"Team Lyoko, let's go!" they roared, their voices slowly gaining pace and lifting to shouts as they yelled their battle cry.  
"Tea ye Yoko, let's go!" Aelita's children cried, having no idea what the adults were talking about, utterly confused that one was angry one moment, the group downstairs were sullen another moment, and the next shouting and hooting about something, as if they were cheering themselves on.

The cheering continued for a few minutes, both Antea and Waldo somewhat catching on to the words, though occasionally saying it wrong. The chanting continued for a few minutes before the group separated, running in separate directions in the household to get started on the downfall of XANA. Proudly yelling out the eventual downfall of XANA's system, they assisted Jeremie by getting the necessary things for him as he brought out his newer laptop, and smiled as he started writing a new program, one that would surely track XANA down until he was eventually destroyed.


	5. Animal I have become I

**Code: Apocalypse- Chapter IV I/II [Animal I have become]**

**William Dunbar**

"They need me…" he whispered to himself, looking down into his reflection in the steadily growing pool of water in his sink. "They need me… to prove I'm worth it… to prove I am still the William they had known and trusted before I stupidly went to battle the very thing they told me to stay away from… they need me because they know that I have grown up…"  
'Ah, yes, but what about the things you have done while being a slave of XANA, hm? Don't you think that counts too?" his conscience mocked.  
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" William roared, trying to ignore the persistent pest that was his mind.  
"I will not be silenced. I am your doubts… I am your darker side…"  
"Go away!" He yelled, now sure that his neighbors had heard him yelling at nothing for no apparent reason.  
"You know that I won't go away, Dunbar. I am you. I am the part of you that haunts your dreams, that stalks behind you in your shadow. I am the thing that keeps you up at night, the very essence of your fears…" it mocked again.  
"I… Leave me… leave me alone…" William moaned.  
"Then accept the fact that you are a monster…" it hissed back, its slithery tone making William cringe a little.  
"No… I am not a monster… I am not, and was not a willing puppet of that accursed virus…"  
"You cannot deny what you are inside…"  
"No!" William screamed closing his eyes and panting heavily.

William groped blindly around and shut off the faucet, listening to the dripping of the leaky faucet he had forgotten to fix. The voice in his head continued to try to persuade him that he was nothing but a puppet for his hated arch enemy, and nothing but such. When the voice dissipated into the recesses of his mind once again, and he opened his eyes, he saw himself in the water, as a scared child. William bent closer to the water, and saw that his reflection was cowering in the shadow of something. William's reflection seemed to turn towards William himself, its eyes as wide as dinner plates. The reflection soon disappeared, and soon changed to the darker teenage version of himself; committing horrible acts in XANA's name.

William angrily glared at the water before slapping the still surface, causing some water to spill out the side of the sink while the remaining water vibrated and rippled within the porcelain. Without missing a beat, William cupped some water in his hands and splashed it upon himself several times, dousing his face and hair thoroughly. Like a wet dog, he shook his head and torso vigorously- the water droplets splashed everywhere in his bathroom, panting afterwards as he grew a little dizzy from 'drying' himself.

"Always…" It his again, startling him from looking at the draining pool of water into straightening upwards and facing the mirror.

His mind made him see things in the mirror- images from his past that he wished he had forgotten. While it was assumed that he had not remembered anything during his possession that XANA had taken over his body and used it as a puppet for his schemes, William begged to differ. He had seen everything that XANA made him do through a tortured purple-colored haze, and see them struggle in vain as they fought to ward off his attack. He had felt his powers crackling under his skin, the powers XANA had forcibly bestowed upon him waiting to be unleashed onto his next victim. The almost inhuman strength that was part of his powers were always screaming for something for them to main, or even murder- it was a constant nuisance that caused him to be irritated- something XANA used to its advantage. He had known the anger and contempt XANA had for the Lyoko Warriors, who were trying to save the world from him… from the animal he had become.

Anger rushed through him as his saw the dark reflection in the mirror, the reflection staring back with an evil, taunting grin. The reflection's eyes leered down at him with an air of superiority. William's mouth curved downwards as he bared his teeth, the sudden urge flowing through him to punch the reflection in the face, to destroy the smirk his reflection had on its 'face'. Without fully realizing it, he had cocked his right hand back, and with a loud crash accompanied by the tinkling of glass, the mirror shattered under the force of his punch. William cursed and cried out in pain as some glass shards became embedded into his fist, some shards tinted red with the flowing blood that was now issuing from his bleeding hand.

The rest of the glass shards were scattered around the bathroom, glittering in the light as it shone upon them. William was careful not to tread on them as he removed the glass from his hand, dropping them gingerly into the nearest garbage can. The smirk from the reflection was still there, even though the mirror was gone- it was burned into his mind by William himself, who wanted to use his anger and frustration whenever he would cross paths again with XANA.

"They say anger is like a rush of adrenaline. When strong enough, it can turn the weakest of people into someone's worst fear, and turn an ordinary punch into a train colliding into the target." William muttered as he nursed the cut, kicking glass and aluminum cans alike out of his way as he strode to strode over to the couch.

Something caught his eye again as he plopped down onto the couch. The screen was still on, like a beacon in the sky for a hero to rescue to world again. William stared at it for a while, finding the animation of the eye of XANA blinking on and off over a picture of an envelope strangely hypnotizing. For several moments he contemplated before sighing and getting up again, walking away from the cell phone to a large, roughly made wooden cabinet nearby, and opening it. He had something important to do, and there was no avoiding it. William smiled as he saw the contents of the cabinet still there, untouched from the time of its unused, and brought one item down, the cold metal sending a shiver down his spine.

"Long time, no see, but I suppose you're still pretty, even after the years have passed…" he murmured as he stroked it, and reached for similar items, being careful not to drop them as he removed them from the shelves they were currently resting on.

[Page Break]

**Code: Apocalypse- Chapter V**

There was dust everywhere, the soft, gray 'snow' resting on everything in the attic, even on the cobwebs of spiders long gone as the light shone through the window. Several chests stood, forgotten on the ground, their golden locks dulled to a brass color over time. A musty odor of air not circulated for long periods of time permeated throughout the attic, and it was strong enough to cause anyone to gag. The gray lining of the chests lay undisturbed, that is, until a flurry of rainbow-colored feathers descended upon it and stirred it into the air again. The wielder of said feather duster coughed as the fine particles rose into the air, tickling her nose as they floated upwards.

A sharp intake of air, and a moment later, a loud sound echoed in the rafters as Antea sneezed, her older brother poking his head above the mountain of boxes looking at her with an amused expression on his face. Antea frowned and stuck out her tongue, Waldo frowning and attempting to do the same. Both of them continued to try to one-up each other, but Jeremie, noting what they were doing, smiled in amusement before gently escorting them downstairs. Both of them continued trading weird facial expressions- until Antea found the air horn that was lying under her parents' bed after much jostling of the small aluminum metal box that contained it. Figuring out the code for the padlock that was the apparent preventative measure was easy for her, compared to being the younger sibling.

"Aelita, find anything yet?" Jeremie called, sifting through the long-forgotten boxes in their attic. "Ugh, it's surprising how much junk we have acquired over the years, huh after graduation from college?"  
"Yeah, it's amazing how much we squirreled away, but never realized it until we actually look at this stuff. I mean, after we got this house, we basically took the things we didn't need, and dumped them without looking until now- several years later." 'Aelita' replied, continuing to rummage through the items. "Oh! It's your marriage picture…" 'Aelita' near whispered, handing over the photograph to Jeremie, who wiped some dust away from the protective plastic covering.  
"Oh… I remember I was so nervous, every part of my body was shaking with fear." Jeremie admitted, running his hand through his hair. "… and here's yours!" Jeremie declared after a moment of rummaging through a small chest, grinning as broadly as the sun during the daytime. "... Aelita's what's wrong?" he asked, suddenly noticing her troubled expression.  
"Couples aren't supposed to lie to each other, especially married ones, correct?" she asked, looking down at her now shaking hands instead of looking him in the eyes.  
"Correct…" Jeremie responded, unsure of where this is going.  
"How long have you known?" she asked, her head suddenly jerking upwards, facing him with a small frown.  
"Err… How long have I known what?" Jeremie cautiously replied, aware of what he next question might be.  
"How long have you known me as the fake? How long ago did you notice the inconsistencies- the differing behavior and the false emotion that I put into my actions in the past weeks?"

Jeremie sighed and stared at the ground. It was true that he had known that this would come up sooner or later- it was just a matter of time before it did. However, he felt this occasion to be quite unexpected- to have her riffling in the attic through memories that were never hers in the first place, and then her suddenly throwing the question out there, into open territory. There was no escaping from the question, and even as loud blasts continued to echo from downstairs, he knew that if he would go and separate the kids now, the Aelita clone would keep following him, asking the same question over and over until he was quite sure that he had gone insane.

"Quite a while now, actually." He muttered, "You see, I knew you were a decoy, a replica perhaps, of the real thing. The dagger under the bed, the attempted murder… god… I played along with this charade and gave you a kiss… one of betrayal, perhaps. Oh, I knew you were a fake from the second Waldo called me on the phone… weeks ago, and told me about it… the grocery trip… the supposed Microsoft company seller… the whole thing was a lie! Everything I said to you during the past few weeks was a lie! I've asked myself countless times why I didn't just find your programming and delay XANA for a while with your deletion!" Jeremie ranted, breathlessly 'explaining' to her his actions during the past weeks in question. "A question still haunts me though…" Jeremie said, breathing heavily, straightening up and looking her sternly in the eye. "Who or what are you?"

For once in the relatively short amount of time she had been on this world from her creation from the real Aelita, she was speechless. For the first time, she had experienced this type of reaction from the normally soft-spoken man she came to know as who the original copy was married to. Jeremie started pacing back and forth, muttering incoherently while breathing hard. Once in a while, he would whip around and look at her before continuing to pace, muttering strange things as he ranted and raved. It was only after two full minutes without any answer from her did he suddenly turned around, and lifted one of his hands, still curled into a fist, a gold diamond ring sparkling on one of his fingers.

"See this?" he asked, making sure her eyes were focused on it. "This is the same wedding ring I wore about eight years ago. I don't care if you're a copy. You're still part of Aelita, copy or no copy, and I know my Aelita would tell the truth, marriage or no marriage. You want to know how I know you're part of Aelita?" he asked, waiting for her to nod. "You're a copy, which means you're basically like the original, but only having one difference- the trait being in originality. Now, answer me, who are you?"  
"My… name is Aelita… or that's how I was programmed to think…" the clone murmured, somewhat uselessly. "Created either June 5th, or June 6th –my memory files are being corrupted, I apologize- I was sent here to eliminate targets for XANA, mainly you and the rest of the group of friends that constantly thwarted my … err… XANA."  
"…You're not calling him your master? That's odd…" said Jeremie, titling his head to the side as he continued to watch her. "Elaborate."  
"Many a time I have heard a voice speaking to me. It was not XANA, and it wasn't yours. I think it was mine, but slightly different. It wasn't full of hate or malice it was… I don't know what it was… Anyway, I don't feel very obliged to call him master- stop staring at me like that, it's rude- I just don't know why. He… or it hasn't really paid very much attention to me, so I don't see why I have to serve him. I owe him nothing. My creation, stolen memories, and 'life' as you humans would call it would have been nothing had Aelita not lived. My life is indebted to her, not XANA. I guess I am doing the thing you humans would call 'breaking away'."  
"So… err… I'm sorry if I got hysterical all of a sudden earlier…" Jeremie apologized, rubbing the back of his head apologetically. "Have you had any contact with him, lately?"  
"You mean within the week? Uh… today is Wednesday, right? So… no, I haven't reported for over a week… and I think I don't want to do anymore. He has to get his own information now. I' guess I'll be a little rebellious, with a slight hint of lazy."  
"So… I guess you're an ally now?" Jeremie cautiously inquired.  
"I guess." She replied, shrugging.  
"… So that means it's my turn to tell the truth again, huh?" he asked, earning another shrug from her. "I guess I have to tell you about why Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi have been hanging around here increasingly, huh?"  
"Go ahead." She responded, tongue cheekily sticking out between the lips that now formed a small smile. "Lie to me."

[Page Break]

It was Jerlita week supposedly last week, but I hadn't submitted anything. ...And so the tide will turn, the seasons will change, though a sense of doubt will always remain...


	6. Chapter VI

**AN:** Edited, with 10% less commas (for fun, I might start counting the number of commas I use). There aren't any semicolons here either- I lied about them.

The importance of boring you people in some chapters was so that I can hit you with other stuff either and catch you off guard. I consider it an ingenious plan. I love unpredictability.

**Code: Apocalypse- Chapter 6**

"Are you insane?" Odd practically yelled at the young nervous genius over the phone. "You're going to kill us all!"

Jeremie bit his bottom lip as a reaction and let Odd yell at him for his apparent stupidity. His shut his eyes and mentally berated himself for telling the others about the little conversation he and 'Aelita' had in the attic. Ulrich and Yumi were slightly slouching against the cream-colored wall beside the doorway, hands in their pockets of their pants and their faces set into a calm and thoughtful expression. Since Jeremie had reluctantly broken the news to them, they had not said anything yet, choosing to let Odd express his feelings first as a sign of courtesy. They didn't think much of the situation, but possibly contemplating whether the copy was telling the truth or not, and whether if she was really their ally. The clone in question had volunteered to step outside for a while as they talked, though they were pretty sure that the clone could probably not resist the temptation of listening the window or door like a small child, hearing things and secrets she was not meant to hear at the time by the keyhole of her parents' bedroom while they talked without knowing her presence.

"Shoot me, Odd! Shoot me! Shoot me just for trying to ally with a supposed enemy on a common ground against an insane Artificial Intelligence we wasted years of our lives on in the past! Shoot me with the pistol you use in the shooting range, longing for the same kind of excitement in your life that you had when we were united against fighting XANA! Come over here and shoot me right here, right now!"

There was silence on the other end of the receiver. It was obvious that Odd was either shocked by the outburst of the normally quiet and reserved Jeremie, or that he had chosen not to answer Jeremie at the moment. Either way, the line was silent for a long time on both sides of the telephone. The phone clicked once, and the line went dead. The white-colored phone was slammed against the receiver, the sound echoing shortly before fading away. No words were exchanged between the three in the tense space of the silent room.

[Page Break]

Visions endlessly played inside of its mind- people and places of who it had never seen before flashing momentarily before giving way to another memory. Memories that was not its own flashed through its mind shortly. In some memories, he saw four others who were bound by a connection with each other came to be familiar to its mind as they laughed with each other for reasons that it didn't know. It watched through someone's point of view as they grew up before his eyes- their faces, bodies, and voices changing, but their connection with each other failed to waver. Gradually, by increments, those memories began to fade as his consciousness called to him, lifting him out of the dream-like reverie.

Everything it saw when it first opened its dark brown eyes was tinted either a dark shade of red or black and wavered as its watery prison continued pumping oxygen into its lungs via a machine hidden to its sight. There was a burning pain in its lungs as the machinery forced its lungs to expand and contract over and over again. It fully awoke with much confusion to find itself in a large glass tube large enough to house its body, with two shadowed figures in front of it muttering words that it could not hear or plainly understand at the moment. Its body was somehow suspended by an invisible force in the water- its body completely submerged in the dark liquid. Thoughts- simple and childish in their nature- floated momentarily to its mind before a sudden and excruciating pain occurred. It gritted its teeth and shut its eyes in pain, swatting around itself in a struggle to free itself from the burning sensation in its throat. A cry of pain was wrenched from its throat and out its lips as the pain continued to course through its body. Anger suddenly boiled inside it- hatred of every living thing flowed through its veins continuously. It opened its mouth and let out a loud and terrible roar- muffled by the water in the glass tank- and its anger blinded its vision as a large wave of red energy emanated from its body in a circle. The glass glowed light pink as it absorbed the shockwave until it reached its breaking point.

The glass surrounding it shattered- large pieces of glass flew outwards as the wave of energy hit it, littering the floor as the water that had surrounded it spewed out in a great torrent. It stood in the center of its ruined casing, taking its first ragged breath on its own and tasting freedom from the glass case for the first time as it looked to where the two figures had stood, immediately confused as it saw a large red beehive-style barrier protecting them from the water and the flying glass shards. One of the figures lowered its hand, and the barrier disappeared from view just as quickly as it had come. Suddenly perplexed at its location, it looked around, similar forms akin to these strangers that were shielded by the barrier were encased in similar glass casing, their eyes closed. Noting for the first time the bare metal walls and the numerous computers alongside chemicals bubbling in beakers and flasks on a long table on the side opposite to its current location, it took stock of its situations when there was no apparent way to escape from outside of the room without confronting the two strangers in front of him. It cautiously looked at the figures- one taller and more menacing than the other- before looking down and noticing for the first time its' body.

XANA watched with amusement as the newly born warrior inspected itself, raising one hand to its eye level and flexing its fingers and muscles, the red and black body-suit armor that it was outfitted with shifting slightly as it flexed and un-flexed its arm. The clone of Ulrich Stern had been perfect in almost every single way- there was hardly any way to tell it from the real Ulrich Stern except by the overwhelming sense of rage and obedience XANA had instilled into its mind to make it a mindless monster capable of large amounts of destruction done. Each of the warriors' stolen information gleaned from their profile cards in the supercomputer had each been modified before the clones' creation. Lowering its hand, the Ulrich Stern clone shifted its focus to the taller figure, its eyes dull before recognizing one of them, avoiding eye contact and bowing its head in respect.

"Master…" it uttered to the taller figure- its first word in the cruel world where it had been created in- the said figure giving a wicked smile and baring two rows of white, slightly-pointed teeth in response.

[Page Break]

"Give me that over there, and I'll take some of these… and one of those…" William ordered as he pointed to various items hanging on a wall in the store.  
"Good Lord, son!" The store owner said in response, his heavy eyebrows shifting upwards as his surprise was registered. "Are you a one man army, or what?" he said, giving the said items in a large paper bag that would mostly conceal their shapes and placing it on top of the glass showcasing case.  
"I will be…" William replied, peering at the silver and black automatic shotgun he had taken out of the paper bag to inspect it. "I will be."  
"Gun license, please… thank you…" the store owner said as he took the weapons license from William, inspecting it carefully to see if it was a valid license or not. "Alright… I'll just have to run a mandatory standard background check, and I need you to fill out these papers… right … here" the store owner said, pushing a small packet of papers with a black pen on top. "So excuse me for a minute, and I'll be right back"

William looked at the store owner's retreating back before scowling in disgust at the papers. William hated paperwork, and all forms of it. What made it worse was that there was more papers he had to fill out than he could normally tolerate- amounting to about 5 pieces of papers in total.

"This is not 2001" he muttered angrily. "I shouldn't have to do this. Everything is digital now…" he muttered as he began to fill out the papers. "Name… date of birth… France... I hate paperwork."  
"You gotta fill them out, son, if you want these. These aren't cheap either. You'll be lucky to find new or hardly used weapons like these without breaking your bank account!" He declared with a hearty chuckle.  
"I guess so..." William muttered as he slid completed page after completed page to the other side, starting on the other pages almost immediately. "I hate boats, boat people… boat lawyers…"  
"What does that have to do with guns and questions?"  
"You'll find out yourself someday…" William said, straightening up and capping the pen. "Also…" William added, looking thoughtful. "Do you have any extra ammunition?"

[Page Break]

"Found it!" Waldo yelled, looking quite triumphant as he held up a small set of chips and waving it to his wife, sweat-dropping when he realized that they didn't mean anything to her. "You see, it's a copy of the programs when I first started on Project: CARTHAGE, as well as several other side programs that I never really finished."  
"Any chance we might be able to recreate… recreate…" Antea struggled to find the word.  
"Lyoko."  
"Yes."  
"No."  
"No?"  
"Yes. This is the earlier files of Lyoko, which would be incompatible to the finalized version of Lyoko. Think of a PC from the late 1990s trying to interact with a computer from this day and age. Though I've been gone for approximately 20 years…"  
"20 years I spent rotting away…"  
"Being stuck in a world you created by an AI that had suddenly decided to go rouge isn't a picnic either, my dear 'Tea." Waldo shot back before thinking thoughtfully. "By the way… you still have not told me what happened, or where you were in the years I haven't seen you since you were taken away by those governmental types near Christmas."  
"Around" Antea replied, shrugging. "They spent two years trying to interrogate me on Project: CARTHAGE before sending me to America."  
"America? Why would they give you a free trip there?"  
"No idea, but I was stuck in a gradually degrading mental asylum in Laurel, Maryland for about a year or two. It's abandoned now, of course, it was shut down around… I'd say about 1991. 'Course, they laughed at my pink hair and I dealt with their jokes. I think I'd much be rather sent to another governmental facility, like the one I recently escaped from. At least they had Ice Cream on Fridays."  
"Speaking of which, we better tone down the activity. There's a lot of buzzing in the nearest town nearby of mysterious activity that was not done by any company- which means the people have noticed our little redecorating job."  
"Ben voyons…" Antea muttered.

[Page Break]

"Bring me the profiles of that mad scientist and that insane lady we're supposed to be hunting down."  
"Yes sir!" the lower-ranking official replied, jerking his body to stand flagpole straight and raised his hand into a salute before leaving the room.

The government agent grunted in response and muttered something about not being a soldier before shoving the papers to one side of the desk. Lightly chewing the tip of a pen that he retrieved in his pocket, he boredly gazed around the room, taking in the ruined interior of the part of the building that used to be his office. The walls were badly fire damaged, and the floor was ruined from both the fire and the effects of the water from the sprinkler system and the fire department. Hundreds of files and the documenting he did on hundreds of people were gone- they were all reduced to ashes now. The scent of smoke lay heavily in the air, mingling unpleasantly with the numerous amounts of flowers and vanilla from the air fresheners the building's maintenance staff had sprayed in an attempt to get rid of the smoky odor. On one badly damaged wall, where the fire had spread to the room next to him, there was a constant reminder of the government's failures to detain one of the inmates they were keeping in the building for various purposes-mainly interrogation.

It was the hole in the wall that the said insane lady had made weeks ago. Some of the building's wooden framing was wrecked by simple brute force and a heavy object. Mix a person willing to escape for years, and you've got yourself a big brewing mass of trouble. Unfortunately, like a pan of hot oil and cold water, once the water hits the oil, the oil is going to spring up and lash at whatever it could reach as it flies through the air in response. Most of the building had been damaged to the point of it being totally condemned for the time being. However, the government administration didn't agree on the whole building stopping at once, and relocated its members to a safer part of the building, controlling which rooms would get electrical currents, gas, and running water in order to prevent another fire, or possibly another explosion.

The explosion that had occurred in the gas/electrical room had done untold amounts of damage to the government building- there was an enormous fire that had broken out, and had taken hours to finally extinguish. The sounds of heavy reconstructions done by dozens of construction workers filled the air. Sometimes, a drill boring through rock to rebuild the exterior of the wall would go off loudly, forcing him to clasp his hands over his ears in response. It was only when a certain Officer came into the room with two manila folders clutched in his hand did he break out of his reverie and turn his full attention to the younger male.

"Sir! I've got the files!"  
"Thank you. I need them for review."  
"Agent Simmons."  
"Officer McCoy."

The lower ranking Officer nodded and left. Agent Simmons opened the light tan colored folders, both with large red lettering on their front that read "Closed", "Top Secret", "Case Dismissed" and various other messages. He opened the files and started reading the file that the small black lettering on the tab read "Franz Hopper". His mouth moved along as he read, but stopped at the paragraphs that detailed his exploits and plans to build a program- an Artificial Intelligence that was capable of self learning and disrupting enemy communications, as well as perform various other duties. He saw an old sketch of a supercomputer with writing and complex formulas and calculations written on the side that was slightly bent and folded. It was evident that the MIB had managed to steal some files from riffling through the Hermitage shortly after Franz and his daughter's disappearance, Agent Simmons stopped, eyes widening in realization.

"Get me the head of Intelligence" he whispered.

[Page Break]

Author's Note: The mentioned degrading mental asylum in Laurel, Maryland does exist in America. It is called "Forest Haven", and it did exist until 1991. Most of the buildings have been heavily damaged by vandals, arsonists, and drug dealers. You can see a lot of pictures if you search for "Dakota Fine and the Raiders of the Abandoned Insane Asylum", and click on the link that has the host website of brightestyoungthings(dot)com. There you will find pictures of the said abandoned Insane Asylum that Dakota had taken last year. … or you can search "Forest Haven" in Flickr or use Google Images.

… no, the shopkeeper of the gun store wasn't William's dad. He just calls every young guy "son".

Ben voyons- C'mon. This was said by Jim in episode 90 (French Version)

All clones' body suits are a dark version of Team Lyoko's Season 4 Lyoko avatars. Yes, they're a polymorph-human hybrid.


	7. Bring out the Shiny Weapons

**AN:** Stupidity is sure to ensue. Blame the people on my bus.

**Code: Apocalypse- Chapter 7**

"You disappoint me. I thought I had programmed you better when I created you." XANA coldly said, looking down at the clone, which was currently on the floor and was unaware of his presence until now.  
"… huh… where am I?" the Aelita clone asked, looking around in the dark void around her- it was impossible to see anything at this point in time. A light from above suddenly snapped on, which instantly made the area around her visible. She was stunned as she saw him in his human form, a dark cloaked figure hiding a shadow of a body that made up XANA's semi-physical appearance.  
"You are in a state humans would call 'dreaming'- the ultimate state of vulnerability. I would have terminated your entire programming if it wasn't for the issue at hand that requires my constant attention. Be grateful to your master that I have allowed you to live this long."  
"...You're not my master…" the clone defiantly replied, staring at him dead in the eyes.  
"Fool." XANA snarled as he was narrowing the eyes of the human form he had temporarily borrowed in the clone's dream sequence. "I had created you, did I not, on the 5th of June of this year?"  
"Yes" the clone snapped back, getting up from her prone position on the floor. "But without the girl you wouldn't have been able to create me at all."

XANA was beside himself in his anger, clenching his 'fists' in his overwhelming rage. The clone had a triumphant smirk on her face when XANA finally realized that he would not have been able to create her if it had not had been for the person she was impersonating, which hid her actual expression- fear. Faster than the clone could blink, XANA's hand whipped out and hit her on one cheek, causing her to stumble backwards from the force of the blow and from the surprise. Before she could fall over backwards, she instinctively threw her weight forward enough so that she could stumble forwards and regain her footing again.

"I'm giving you an ultimatum." XANA growled as he raised his hand once more, preparing to hit her again before he stopped himself from doing so. "Be thankful that I'm doing this. Either you join my side once more and take out those annoying pests as you were instructed to upon your initial creation, or I'll make your deletion as slow and painful as possible. Remember that though you may not consider me to be your master anymore, you're still connected to me as a worthless puppet in my plans."

The clone bit her bottom lip and nodded, crossing her fingers behind her back subconsciously. XANA narrowed his eyes in suspicion as he probed her mind through the link, but came up with nothing. Satisfied when the last rigorous mind probing did not show that she had any thoughts of betraying him; he nodded in apparent satisfaction with her answer. The light above her was fading away from sight, taking XANA along with it. The clone woke up in a bed with blue sheets - her body shooting out of bed in reaction as she was snapped out of her dream. Jeremie Belpois slept soundly beside her, not waking up to her sudden movements. Breathing heavily, she gulped and looked around the room to make sure that this wasn't another dream. Sighing with relief as she realized that she was conscious and not dreaming, she knew that she would not be able to go to sleep again. As the sun was rising from the horizon, she could only sit up and ponder silently on the future of the world.

[Page Break]

The black and red clad male moved silently throughout the corridor, his ears listening for any hint of sound. His eyes were scanning the area, which was almost completely dark besides the small amounts of light which allowed him to see where he was going. He gripped one of his twin katanas in a manner a person would call nervous, and stopped to check his surroundings. There was nothing in his area so far. He breathed a small sigh of relief, and continued on, keeping low to the ground and hiding in the darkest shadows of the room. His kind was not supposed to be nervous or relieved- just an emotionless killing machine. Why they had picked him out for a brutal training session, he did not know.

The clones were supposed to be a precise and perfect copy of the original person though with warped morals and behaviors. However, just like in any species, a runt somehow appeared in the litter by some freak chance, something that XANA considered needed to be eliminated. So, in his effort to weed out the weaker hybrids, he developed a rigorous training course which was made up of the clones fighting each other. The last test was supposedly a dark room and something that would ultimately prove their worth. Many times he would see his fellow clones head into the training room- but never come out.

Something breathed- inhaling and exhaling softly, but loudly enough to trigger the clone's internal alarm. The Ulrich clone immediately focused his attention on the breathing, listening to it as it drew near. The clone raised his sword in reaction and prepared both his mind and his body to perform several deadly strikes in the direction the breathing was coming from when suddenly it stopped- just as quickly as it had came. The clone could not hide his expression of surprise at the turn of the events. Thinking that the thing had chickened out and didn't want to fight him at the display of his weapon, he lowered his sword as he let his guard down- a potentially deadly mistake for him.

Faster than he could react, a blur passed in front of his range of vision and raked its sharp claws against him twice in an uppercut-like motion, causing blood to flow on the clone's upper torso and parts of his neck, forcing the clone to drop the sword that was in his hand. The clone stumbled from the blow and cursed his stupidity- it was obvious that the thing in front of him was using its claws to follow him by gripping to the ceiling, and watch him by digging its claws into the stone pillars around the room. It was a slim figure wearing a dark black and red body suit with claws that measured several inches. The Ulrich clone regained his footing and leaned back, evading a deadly swipe of the creature's claws before it could land another hit on him.

In response, the creature gave an animalistic growl in anger and flipped over backwards several times to put some distance between them. Before the Ulrich clone could run and hide to safety while he planned to take down this thing, the creature reached for its back and pulled out a bow and arrow. Notching the bow, the creature gave a short and low growl before it fired- aiming for the clone's heart. The clone gasped and turned around to bend down so it would miss his body. However, the arrow flew through the air faster than he could perform his evasive maneuver, and pinned his body to the wall he had backed up against.

The creature was about to fire another arrow at him, intending to finish him off, when the clone grasped the arrow piecing through his armor, pulled with all his strength, and threw it at the creature. The creature was forced to duck, giving the clone some time to charge at his opponent and tackle it. He pushed it back a few feet before the creature recovered from the blow and began to claw with its sharp nails and snap with its vicious fangs at him.

The Ulrich clone gave a warrior cry and retaliated with close combat- punching and kicking at his opponent without defending himself. The Ulrich clone was soon breathing heavily- he had lost a large amount of blood, and was tiring quickly as the battle wore on while his opponent only shown a marginal amount of tiring. Desperate, he pushed all of his weight into his opponent to force it down onto the ground with a loud thud. It snarled in protest and its claws rose once again to strike, but the Ulrich clone pinned its arms above its head with an enormous amount of effort, the rest of his weight pinning its body down so it couldn't move.

He shifted a little so he was pinning both of its arms with one of his hands. Reaching for his other blade with his free hand he would have plunged it into the creature's heart, had in not been for the bright light suddenly from above, and loud clapping made by a light snapping on from above and the loud clapping sound that echoed off of the bare walls and distracted him. Quickly locating the source of the clapping, he was stunned to see XANA there, applauding his success with a wide grin on his borrowed form's face.

"Well, done." He congratulated, continuing to applaud. "Not many people could beat my apprentice and still be alive after losing so much blood. I knew that the genes for enhanced capabilities would be fully operational in your system."

Looking down at the pinned opponent under him, his eyes widened in shock as he saw the pink-red haired female under him, her ruby-red eyes glinting maliciously as she grinned evilly at the expression of surprise on his face. The Ulrich clone felt her weight shift under him- her knees were digging into his stomach and before he realized what happened, he was flying through the air as he was forcibly pushed off. He landed roughly on the ground and glared at the female. XANA-Aelita only smirked at him as she stood up and dusted off her body suit before retreating silently into the darkness.

"You will be equipped with upgrades to your fighting skills and weaponry and will join the rest of your surviving brothers and sisters. You will need all the help you can get for the war." XANA continued, appearing to not recognize the minor scuffle that happened a few seconds ago.  
"… What war?" the Ulrich clone asked suspiciously.  
"My son, I will declare war on the world after I gain enough power to do so, and I will not stop until all the human filth is eliminated from this world."  
"… That includes the clones, correct?"  
"Unfortunately yes for you and your clone siblings' human parts, though your polymorphic half will not be affected at all from this. Do not fret- it is only a small fraction of our costs during the war."

XANA gave what appeared to be a reassuring smile before walking backwards from the light and melting into the darkness once more. Ulrich Clone #15 sighed and looked down on the floor as he pondered his fate and what is to come. War didn't sound like it was a good thing at all. Pain shot through his skull as he thought this- hatred pumping through his veins once again accompanying a blind sense of rage towards humans. The polymorphic side of him loyal to XANA was not about to have any thoughts of betrayal from his inferior side- It would dominate his mind and body, even if the human part would have to be killed in order to do so. The clone was suddenly filled with zeal to eliminate all humanity and a fierce sense of loyalty towards XANA as the polymorphic side continued its massive deluge of brainwashing and propaganda.

Thoughts of the negative effects of XANA's upcoming war lay forgotten, along with thoughts of abandoning XANA to pursue stopping his plans. Nothing mattered now except being faithful to his master, and killing off the humans without a care or a sense of morality from his human side. Ulrich Clone #15 gave a sadistic smirk to nobody in particular as images of the downfall of humanity filled his mind. He stepped out of the light's range and out of the training area, going towards the section of the building where weapons were forged. He wanted his blade to be deathly sharp and menacing while still having the nice and shiny appearance of the blade.

[PB]

"You're going to have one chance. Only one, understand? We will trust you this _one _time in hopefully our last fight against XANA." Ulrich stressed.  
"Don't ask me how these

guys managed to convince me… I still don't trust you."  
"You are right in your suspicions not to trust me… I shouldn't be trusted. I am a clone, after all" the clone Aelita replied, nodding her head. "I want to tell-"  
"Right, we'll discuss this later… It doesn't seem like a big issue at the moment, or all of us would have all been dead weeks ago." Yumi interrupted, shrugging her shoulders.  
"Maybe it's XANA scheme. …trick us into trusting her, and then when our backs were turned, kill us." Odd suggested.  
"Nonsense! It… err… she would have done it weeks ago, before we knew. XANA would have been impatient, as usual, and would have tried to eliminate us right away." Jeremie snapped.  
"Guys…" Yumi said, rolling her eyes at the display as the clone silently observed their discussion.  
"… What about when XANA went around kissing people to divide us? He didn't try killing us until we unmasked him."  
"But XANA's not kissing people this time, Odd" Jeremie replied, getting more annoyed by the second.  
"Guys…" Yumi said, trying to get their attention.  
"Yes, but Jeremie kissed the clone, which is basically XANA, so they obviously kissed, duh. It must be another XANA attack."  
"Don't be stupid Odd" Ulrich countered. "You're not 14- you're over 20 years old. Talk like an adult for once. Now that Jeremie has made his point, I suppose that I can consider her only a major threat and not the apocalypse, or something."  
"Oh ho ho! What made you change sides and suddenly defend her? Are you swapping sides?"  
"Shut up you little-" Ulrich threatened.  
"Quiet down!" Odd shot back.  
"Shut up, clown!" snapped a very angry Ulrich.  
"What in Lyoko- ?" Jeremie asked.  
"Take it back!" Ulrich yelled at Odd.  
"What back?"  
"That back!"  
"Your back?"  
"What?"  
"Who's back?" Odd asked.  
"She is!" Jeremie said as he was pointing to Yumi in hopes the stupidity in the room would stop.  
"In black?" asked the clone, puzzled on why the humans in the room were suddenly fighting.  
"Kit Kat!" Odd yelled, in complete randomness.  
"Shut up!" Ulrich screamed.  
"Mommy!" Antea yelled as she clutched one of the clone's legs in fear.  
"Shut what up?" Odd teased as he continued the verbal joust with Ulrich, enjoying this chat.  
"Your stupid mouth" Ulrich replied, getting more annoyed by the second.  
"Who's back?" Odd 'innocently' asked again.  
"Nobody's back!"  
"Nobody is here?"  
"We're here!"  
"We're nobody?"  
"I'm going to wring your neck. Squeeze the life out of you!" Ulrich threatened as his eyebrow was twitching uncontrollably in his anger.  
"Guys! Stop fooling around! This is supposed to be a civil discussion, not a scream fest of stupidity!" Jeremie yelled.  
"Stay out of this, Jeremie! Let me at him!" Ulrich yelled back, raising his arms to appear as if he was going to fulfill the threat.  
"GUYS!" Yumi yelled in annoyance, instantly silencing everyone in the room.  
"WHAT!" they snapped back, causing her to sweat drop.  
"Um… I think the clone- I mean I think she was going to say something?"  
"XANA likes to go to forests a lot."  
"He what?" Jeremie asked. "Is that all you have to say?"  
"That's where he's hiding." The Aelita clone replied, shrugging her shoulders. "A forest somewhere in France. He manually moved his forces to another base after finding the first base unsatisfactory. It's like the research lab you found in the jungle. The trees provide excellent cover as well."  
"Well…?" Ulrich directed the question to the group.  
"Well what?" the clone asked.  
"When are we going to kick XANA's tail?"  
"We're going to need weapons, Ulrich." Yumi replied.  
"Allow me." A voice said, his voice echoing in the room.  
"William?" Yumi shouted, surprised. "I thought you didn't want to participate in the fight against XANA!"  
"William?" the clone asked, confused on the situation.  
"The one and only!" He proudly declared. "It took me a while to find your house, Jer. I think I had the driver circle your house several times before I heard you guys yelling at something." William paused before giving an apologetic look and saying "Sorry, Yumi. I wasn't thinking about you guys. …I was kind of selfish before I realized that you guys did basically sacrifice a member to save my tail."  
"How did you get into my house?" asked Jeremie, wondering if William had learned how to pick locks and enter homes unnoticed.  
"The door was unlocked." William replied, shrugging at Jeremie. "I was going to knock, but I didn't want to interrupt the fun conversation you guys were having."  
"It's alright, William. The stupidity level was high enough here anyway."  
"Hey!" Odd snapped. "I'm still here, and I can hear you, Ulrich."  
"What do you have, William?" a curious Jeremie asked, interested in diverting the discussion to something else besides senseless screaming.

William smiled, and shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly before motioning out the door to the black painted van parked outside the house. Opening the back of the van, there were several hooks screwed onto the interior of the van's walls, each holding a weapon by the trigger guard. The gang and the clone marveled at the sight of the weapons, and William smiled as he saw the look of awe etched upon their faces.

"I bought most of these today. The rest of them were given to me by my father as both a parting gift and as family heirlooms."  
"… You brought all these just to take down XANA?" Odd asked, his mouth hanging open at the sight of the shiny weapons compared to the pistol he used at the shooting range.  
"Yep, now are you going to get into this van, or what?"  
"Hold on" Jeremie interjected. "I need to get some supplies first!"

With that, Jeremie rushed into the house to get some supplies for the road trip. Upon exiting and preparing to lock the house up, he was assaulted by requests by both Antea and Waldo asking if they could come along for the trip. Jeremie sighed, and tried his best to explain the current situation and that it was dangerous for them, but they pushed on, wanting to come along for the ride. Realizing that nobody would be able to take care of them, Jeremie finally consented, and entered the back of the van with the rest of the group and his children, shutting the door when everybody was in. Settling uncomfortably on the floor as there were no extra seats, they ended up sitting near the walls of the van. They were envious that William got the other seat in the front of the , trying not to get thrown everywhere as the van swerved dangerously every now and then. Jeremie was about to angrily give the driver a telling off, but found the driver's appearance to be very intimidating, and so he silently sat on the ground without complaining. The others had followed his gaze and they too, looked uncertainly at the driver.

He was a male of about thirty five years of age, with short brown hair sticking up everywhere and a short beard, sporting a black leather jacket with the sleeves torn off to show off his muscles. His arms were covered in various tattoos, which displayed various messages.

"Oh…" William added, brightly smiling when he saw the expressions on the gang's faces. "Don't be afraid of the driver. He's one of my old biker buddies! He usually doesn't drive vans, though." William chuckled as their expressions turned to one of relief.  
"I hate vans…" the driver grumbled in reply, not taking his eyes off of the road.  
"That reminds me…" Yumi said, suddenly realizing something after she lightly bumped her head against the bottom of an assault rifle. "Ulrich, we have to get our kid too in case something happens!"  
"Are you guys okay back there?" William asked. "Don't worry. I'll ask the driver to make a stop over or two."  
"Can you give us directions to XANA's hideout?" Jeremie asked the clone, brightening up when she nodded in reply as the van drove off into the unknown future.

[Page Break]


	8. Animal I have become II

**Code: Apocalypse- Chapter 8  
"Trust"  
July 12, 6:10 AM**

The sky was bathed in the fiery color of the sun- a mix of blood red, fierce yellow, and vibrant orange mixed together to announce the sun's inevitable rising. It was nothing less of beautiful, especially when the sun was rising through the space between two mountains. Morning was approaching, and the light shone down upon a rain-covered black van parked on the dew covered grass of a valley. Behind the van was the skeleton of a house, the wet wooden framing plainly visible to those who cared to look at it. In the front of the home were several logs that were being shaped into the basic parts of a home. Nobody was in the gutted house at the moment, its former occupants as well as several others sleeping in the van than be exposed to the weather.

The driver was in the back of the van, staking claim to a corner as his resting spot. He had switched places with Jeremie, who had driven the rest of the trip to the former mountain cabin after picking up Akihito. The latter was currently resting with his parents, the dark colored hair covering his eyes making it difficult to tell if he was awake or not. Near Aelita and Jeremie's childrens' legs lay three medium-sized bundles of fur, which Jeremie had to pick up after Antea and Waldo had started to complain and didn't want to leave them behind. It was a minor inconvenience to turn around and pick them up, but it didn't really matter- the countryside didn't have much traffic anyway, and the roads and vehicles had developed enough so that the traffic wouldn't be that horrible than it was about 15 years ago. Some parts of France were especially notorious for the large amounts of traffic it

Above, in the sky, fighter planes and drones roared ahead, scouting for the fugitives the government had recently taken interest in. They searched high and low over France to look for a pink-haired female that was described to be in her late 40's, and an aging scientist that was supposedly around in his later 50's or 60's. The fully unmanned planes roared on, heading towards the sunlight as it returned to base for repairs and for refueling. On their way there, however, their controls sparked a little with electricity before the lit control panels turned bright red momentarily. XANA's symbol flashed on the infected machinery before disappearing- the planes returning to normal in the process. XANA's virus within the planes would lie dormant until it would need them. Until then, it would have to remain as inconspicuous as possible.

[Page Break]

Simmons rubbed his head wearily in exhaustion as he tossed the manila folders on the table. It puzzled him that there were no reports on either Antea or Waldo Schaeffer. With a small sigh, he got up and looked through the files, pulling out the one that read "Aelita Rose Schaeffer", and began to sift through the files. There was nothing very helpful, though there were notes that both she and her father had moved from their mountainous region to a location near Paris. An old and slightly tattered map fell out of the file with red permanent-pen markings, and Simmons picked it up in curiosity. There was a general map of Boulogne-Billancourt, with an area circled by red marker near a forested area. A note read "Possibly here", which probably meant it was the location they had disappeared to after the government had spent several years trying to track them down. His interest waxing, he continued to read the files, slightly frowning as he reached the end of the reports.

Apparently, she had disappeared along with the mysterious scientist in 1994, but they had no idea where she was at the moment. The last entry marked was a report on the disappearance of both of them, stamped over with large red lettering that said "Unknown Location". With a grunt of annoyance, he tossed the folder onto the table and continued looking; raising his eyebrows in surprise when he came across a folder tab marked "Aelita Stones/Belpois". 'Surely there cannot be many people named Aelita' he thought as he pulled the file free and scanned it for any information that might help in the case. A recent picture of said female greeted him as he opened the file, and Simmons pulled it free from the paperclip holding it to the manila folder, inspecting it for a few minutes before putting it back in place and reading the description below it.

Current Name: Aelita Belpois  
Maiden Name: Aelita Stones  
Married to: Jeremie Belpois  
Children Antea and Waldo Belpois  
Occupation: Mixed, mainly works as a Computer Technician/Coordinator  
Schools Attended: Home-schooling provided by orphanage, Kadic Academy (8th grade and Secondary School), Université de technologie de Belfort-Montbéliard (College)  
Parents: Unknown, subject is an orphan from Canada  
Date of Birth: 9/21/95  
Hair Color: Pink (Natural Hair Color)  
Eye Color: Green  
Ht: Approximately 170.18 cm (5 ft, 7 inches)  
Diseases/Abnormalities: None, slight genetic difference which gives hair its strange color.

Simmons stopped reading, and nearly dropped the folder when he saw the hair color. 'How could I have not noticed this much sooner!' he mentally shouted in realization. He continued to read the medical lab report and dropped it onto the table as he was finished. Unclipping the medical reports from both Aelita folders, he compared them and nodded in confirmation to his suspicions as both medical files matched each other. He had just closed the files and shoved them into his laptop case before he heard the sound of a door opening.

"Sir?" he greeted the older agent coming in through the door and instantly hid his suspicion on why a field agent would be here in the file room.  
"Simmons, I thought I'd find you here" O'Reilly replied with a hearty chuckle before he composed himself, his face back to its vaguely threatening expression. "Any information yet on the Schaeffers- I mean Hoppers… or … whatever they are called?" O'Reilly asked in a gruffer voice, XANA-eye pupils pulsing momentarily behind his dark glasses. "The computer files have long been deleted, and I cannot find a way to bring them back. I figured I would look in the archives here, and ask you if you found anything yet."  
'That still does not answer my question on why you are here' Simmons thought before replying. "No, the files here aren't offering much. It's basically very vague background information and just detailing their mysterious disappearances on both Mr. and Ms. Schaeffer. For Mrs. Schaeffer, however, her files describe a small fraction of the part she supposedly plays in Project: CARTHAGE, and her recent escape from this building."  
"Is there anything else or information relatively helpful to us, Simmons?"  
"No, sir, there is nothing at all" Simmons replied as he made a deep frown, hoping it would appear that he was severely disappointed.

The XANA-possessed O'Reilly frowned, eyebrows creasing downwards in response to Simmons's statement and left without another word, shutting the door behind him. Simmons sighed in relief and continued to pick through the files on Jeremie Belpois and his children, deciding not to put it in the bag with the other files before he had a good look at them. Simmons was glad he did not feel like sharing the details of his findings yet, and he had felt that there was something strange about O'Reilly that he didn't quite know how to put it. Normally, his behavior would be as cold as ice, and would hardly say anything to anybody. If spoken to when he did not want to be bothered, he would give them a glare that Simmons was sure that it could even intimidate the highest ranking official of the marines.

Sitting down in an office chair, he opened their files, and gently smiled as he saw the pictures of Jeremie and Aelita's children. Pondering on why the government would keep extensive records of people of interest instead of tracking them like the usual government process, he banished this thought and began to read the file on Jeremie Belpois. Perhaps he could find some information on this fellow, and ask him a few questions if he could. Simmons adjusted his glasses and started reading, chewing a pen lightly as he went along.

[Page Break]

It was cold where the clone was now- a winter of sorts, perhaps. The coldness engulfed her completely, and small breezes of wind blew past her every so often, causing the clone to shiver and curled up into a small ball from her prone position to try to retain some heat. When she opened its eyes, all she saw was a wintery wasteland, the snowflakes lightly drifting downwards the only interesting thing in the otherwise gloomy landscape. All she could see for miles was snow in every direction- there seemed to be no end of it. She knew she was sleeping at the moment; her mind was just somewhere else within the subconscious. If this was a dream then, why did she retain her senses for this particular dream?

It was then as she moved slightly that she realized that she was in completely different clothing; it was as if somebody took the second Lyoko avatar she had years ago and modified it to her adult body. There were still the elbow length gloves- though the glove was colored white instead of the dark purple of her previous Lyoko avatar, and instead of being fingerless gloves, it was completely whole. Instead of a dark and light pink form-fitting body suit, there was a light pink colored dress that went down to her ankles. Dark pink and white coloring highlighted the dress, and there was a light blue colored eye-of-XANA on her chest. However, XANA's insignia was turned upside down, and it did not seem to appear malevolent, compared to when it was right-side up and in a bright crimson red.

She stood up, and looked around, her footwear making the snow underfoot make light muffled crunching noises that, in the process, echoed slightly in this otherwise silent world. Her elfin ears twitched slightly as they registered another sound. It vaguely reminded her of the low rumbling of an avalanche, which puzzled her since there were no hills in or around the area that she was in. She gasped as she turned around to the source of the noise and saw a large darkness over the horizon coming closer and closer over the wintery landscape. The clone panicked, and started fleeing; her footsteps becoming slower before she was rendered unable to move as the dark substance was enveloping them. A loud animalistic roar echoed throughout the landscape, forcing her to clasp her hands on her sensitive ears.

Looking up after seeing that there was nothing else around her, she gasped as she registered that a large black mass in the form of a flying bear/bull hybrid was coming towards her, claws outstretched. It had a large red Eye-of-XANA mark on its chest, which shone brightly as it bore down towards its prey. The clone could only watch and silently pray that somehow she would live the encounter as her body started to lose all feeling as her mind became increasingly numb. The hands cupping around her ears fell to the side as she found that she was unable to keep them up there for a longer time. The edges of her vision started to darken as black edged around it, and she knew that she was going to die a horrible and a very painful death alone.

"CLONE!" XANA screeched, his form's jaws opening to reveal numerous shark-like teeth and a long tongue.

The clone only groaned and fell to her knees, knowing that the deletion of her programming had begun, and it was slowly sapping her strength in the process. XANA's incarnation tucked its wings close to its body and began falling towards her faster, wanting to finally dig his claws into her "flesh" and rip the rest of her incarnation to pieces in the clone's mind, as well as her body in the physical world. The damage he was going to do to her here in her mind would be reflected to her body in the real world. It would have been like her body in the physical world was being slashed and torn by some invisible, malignant force.

The clone was now in a prone position on the icy ground, and could only look up with the limited vision she had as she saw XANA coming closer and closer to her location. She closed her eyes and waited for the end. The beating of XANA's wings continued to grow louder and louder. Just before the clone was about to slip into total unconsciousness, a bright light and XANA's screech of surprise and pain jolted her awake again.

In one of the beast's wings was a deeply embedded arrow that made it immediately drift it off-course as it continued to shriek in pain. It crashed into the snow, and it got up, eyes flashing red in its anger. The clone looked around and finally located the source of her savoir, but shielded her eyes at the bright light that emanated from her. The incarnation of the good Aelita stood over protectively of the clone, battle armor and all, and watched as XANA regained his footing and began his raging charge at the two.

"Energy Pulse" the incarnation merely whispered, and a beam of extremely bright light shot out of her outstretched hand, catching XANA in the chest.

The beam cut through XANA's form with ease, revealing a black goo-like substance that was dripping all over the place to where it was injured, healing the wound. XANA spread out its gigantic bat-wings again and unleashed another roar of fury. XANA tilted its head back, jaw slightly ajar to reveal a rapidly gathering mass of dark energy before his head thrust forward and his jaw opened, the ball of dark energy flying out of its mouth to catch the incarnation directly in her chest. She was pushed back several yards, both of her feet digging into the ground to gain some traction.

XANA raised its claws and was about to dig them into the weakened clone's form, had not the incarnation tackled him and forced him into the air with a kick. XANA snarled, and the incarnation merely smirked and waved her hand over the star bracelet from her Lyoko form, revealing large, light pink wings. She too, uttered a warrior's cry, and the two began their aerial battle together. It was a dance of death- dark and bright beams flying back and forth, fire and water clashing against each other.

The incarnation suddenly flew in towards XANA in a close-combat maneuver, enduring the numerous amounts of damage she received from XANA, and pulled her hand back. A brilliant white light shone on that hand as energy rapidly gathered there. She trusted her energy-covered hand through his chest, XANA screeching in pain. His form arched its back in pain, and his eyes widened in realization before his form shattered into pixels, a black mass twisting and turning as it escaped from the scene. The clone could only stare in awe as the incarnation landed next to her, gazing at the clone with a mixture of emotions- understanding and pity.

"Hello darkness, my old friend… I've come to talk with you again." The incarnation whispered almost silently, waving her hand once to dissipate the dark substance entrapping the clone's body.  
"Who… who are you?" The clone asked, glad that her strength and vision were slowly returning.  
"Your good side, I suppose. I told you we'll talk later." The incarnation replied, nodding her head.  
"… I have a good side?"  
"Doesn't everyone?"  
"XANA doesn't, as you can see."  
"Point taken, I suppose. When Aelita was split up into two people- you as the clone, and Aelita in her own body- part of me basically transferred to your side. So, I guess I'm your little conscience."  
"How… How… How am I still alive?"  
"You can thank Jeremie for that. It was he that noticed your twitching and your form flickering in and out of existence in the real world. I have just merely protected damage XANA would have done to your mind- basically rendering you to something like a loose cannon with no sense of morality, or a person incapable of functioning properly."

The sky began to clear- the snow stopped falling and the clouds began to move away from the area. The clone relaxed as she felt her mind become at ease and sat up straight. She gazed at the warrior-like Aelita, the artificial sun glinting off of the polished metal. A bright light then obscured her vision, and when she was finally able to open her eyes, she found that she was gazing at several curious faces looking down at her.

"I'll be fine…" she groaned, trying to get up but giving up and remaining on her back. "I'll get up in a few minutes. …but thank you, Jeremie, for saving my life."

[Page Break]

**July 12, 13:25 (1:25 PM) **

"Where are we going? I thought we were out to kick XANA's tail! What are we doing-?" Odd complained, waving his hands for emphasis.

"We are Odd, just be patient." Jeremie interrupted as he made a left turn into the city, hoping his answer was enough to calm Odd down from his semi-hyper state.  
"You didn't answer my question on where we were going."  
"It's a surprise! Mr. Schaeffer had found some software that _is _compatible with the supercomputer's current software." Jeremie smiled.  
"I don't like it when you're smiling after something technology related… it means that something that is possibly dangerous is going to happen."  
"What did I do that was potentially dangerous?"  
"Oh let's see now." Odd began counting off with his fingers. "The Marabounta incident, my teleportation power, and the "anti-virus" thing you administered to Aelita that one time…"  
"How was I supposed to know it wasn't going to work properly?" Jeremie complained. "I didn't know that it wasn't even a virus at all?"  
"… The robots you made before we were friends that Ulrich mentioned that one time…" Odd continued as if he didn't hear Jeremie.  
"Alright, fine! I get it!" Jeremie yelled, now fully annoyed. "You have to trust me this time though! I Worked with Mr. Schaeffer on this, so it must not be that fully dangerous."  
"… Fine… but I still don't like where this is going…" Odd stopped as an impatient hand waved him away from leaning too far into Jeremie's personal space from his position on the passenger's seat.  
"Don't. Distract. The driver. Ever." Jeremie growled through his gritted teeth.

The van continued on its south-bound path down the city towards the Boulogne-Billancourt area. The rest of the group gasped in surprise as they looked through the windows of the vehicle, familiar sights greeting them as they passed by- the Kadic school area, the local swimming pool nearby, the Hermitage- to which Waldo discretely shed a small tear or two as they drove by it- the Red Trail, and especially the factory, as it loomed over the bridge like an ominous figure before its shadow. The van stopped short of the bridge, and Jeremie took out the key for the van, earning several questioning looks from its inhabitants.

"I'm not sure if the bridge is still stable enough to hold a vehicle that weighs several tons." Jeremie explained, taking his first steps across the bridge in a long time. "Our best bet is to walk across it, and hope that it doesn't collapse and plunge us all into the Seine River. Leave the dogs with the driver… he does not have business in this place… I don't want the kids to be in danger too… so… I think we should-"  
"Daddy, can we come too?" Antea asked, giving her father the best puppy dog-eyed impression she could muster, knowing fully well that her dad never said no whenever she did it.  
"Ante-" Jeremie was flustered. "… I don't think…"  
"Please, daddy? Waldo wants to go too!"  
"… But… but… but!"  
"Please?"  
"Oh… alright…" Jeremie relented as he sighed. "Come along then, but be careful there!"

Yumi rested a hand on the aging bridge, her eyes trailing up and down the bridge's supports, slightly frowning at the growing amount of rust. Hearing footsteps pad behind her, she nodded at Akihito looked up at her with a questioning look, his darkly colored eyes shining with curiosity. Ulrich gently laid a hand on the boy's shoulder, and the two walked across the bridge with Yumi following them. The driver gave a 'humph' in response to being denied access to a potentially interesting discovery and sat on the bumper, leaning against the closed van doors.

"Creepy as ever…" Odd dryly remarked, as he was covering his nose with his shirt as a musty odor invaded his nostrils. "… and disgusting too…" Odd added as he came to a stop at the ledge leading to the factory floor.

Jeremie wrinkled his nose as the odor invaded his sense of smell and gazed at the derelict factory floor. A fine layer of dust coated everything in the factory, hinting that nobody had walked in this building for a very long time. Although Jeremie was sure that nothing living was within the factory anymore, as there wasn't any food source nearby, he could swear that he felt a presence around him and within the factory- an ominous feeling that was set upon him the moment he stepped through the factory's entrance. The light played tricks with his eyes- the metal pieces lying discarded around them had a sinister look to them. He felt several hands clutch his shirt. Looking down, he noticed that his children were slightly hiding behind him, gazing at the factory around them with apprehension.

Waldo was by himself as he surveyed the factory around him. Mixed emotions ran inside of him, though his face remained in its set expression of a perfectly calm and professional-looking man. Jeremie's hand reached forward, grasped a rope, and firmly tugged on it. The rope tightened before dislodging from the ceiling and dropping loosely over Jeremie's hand. Jeremie frowned and dropped the now useless piece of rope onto the ground. He reached out once more and grasped on another rope, hoping that it would not share the same fate as the other.

It held, much to his relief. A few more tugs to make sure it was firmly secure in the ceiling, and he bravely volunteered to go first. He slid down the rope gingerly, breathing a large sign of relief when his feet touched the ground for what had seemed like an eternity. One by one, the adults slid down, Clone Aelita, Yumi, and Antea each carrying a child on their backs. Nodding to each other in response to the silent question if they were alright, they headed towards the corridor, wary of the elevator's functioning after about 10 years of disuse. It was still there, waiting at the factory floor level to be used once again by someone, exactly where the Lyoko Warriors had left it all those years ago.

The light that was able to pour through the dust-covered windows created a strange effect on the machines as they passed by them in the corridor- the metal dully reflected the available light, making the machinery seem more malevolent than normal. The group repressed shivers as they moved past- the factory was cold due to no heating available, and the décor available wasn't helping their nerves. Most of the adults were in the front, and the children were following behind them. A loud crunching sound echoed around the room, and as Waldo passed by, one of the machines used to shape cars dislodged from its holding place and was about to crush the small child, had not a pink blur shot out, held him close to her body, and tumble several times a few meters away from their previous location. Waldo shrieked in surprise and response from the near-death accident, the adults in the front turning in surprise in response to the loud clanging sound behind them.

"Waldo!" Jeremie yelled, holding the frightened child close to him. Waldo's response was to clutch both his father and Clone Aelita tightly.  
"Einstein!" Odd called, instantly getting Jeremie's attention. "Do you think XANA can try to use the factory to try to get rid of us, like he did one time, long ago?"  
"Possibly… though he'd use it more like deathtraps… death by objects falling from the ceiling, to be more precise."  
"Let's move then… I don't feel like being impaled at the moment…" Yumi suggested, helping a slightly stumbling Jeremie to his feet.

The group weaved in and out through the lanes of obsolete machinery and through the maze of pipes in the boiling room adjacent to the industrial level.

"I feel awfully like a rat scurrying through passages." William bluntly stated as they were lead through a near endless maze of corridors, sometimes coming to a dead-end. "Don't you have a map of the factory?" He asked the aging scientist.

"Son, if I had a map or arrows pointing in the right direction, everyone passing through here would have found the supercomputer easily. I found that memorizing it does not have many repercussions."  
"So do you-"  
"I would have led you to the supercomputer a while ago today. Do you think I would remember my way through this place after 20 years?"  
"Well, I suppose-"  
"The only way I found my way out of here was by wandering for hours." the professor snapped, clearly annoyed.

William scowled slightly, and continued to follow the group. It was by a stroke of luck that Yumi suddenly started to wander off, muttering to herself a bit. Curious, the group followed her, Yumi's muttering increasing both in frequency and in volume.

"I remember now!" She yelled happily, startling the group.

With Yumi now leading the group, it took only a few minutes before the group stopped and admired an aerial view of the Supercomputer Lab Room. There was an eerie glow from the panels- they were lit up with a bright purplish light. Blue-colored electricity moved across the keyboard, and the screens flickered red before returning to their purplish coloring again. Jeremie climbed down the ladder and frowned at the discovery of the new problem, approaching the interface warily. A sudden burst of electricity shot out from the interface in his direction, and Jeremie leapt backwards in reaction.

"XANA, you are more evil than I thought."  
"What should we do?" Ulrich whispered as Jeremie inched backwards towards them.  
"Mr. and Mrs. Schaeffer." Jeremie whispered, hoping the volume was low enough not to be picked up by the system. "Can you sneak downstairs to the main supercomputer, and rearrange panels D-24 to F-15? I think if you can re-sequence them, I can momentarily get a hold of the supercomputer from XANA, and then transfer the power to my reserves instead of XANA's?"  
"Will do. How can we communicate with each other, and inform the other of our progress?"  
"Use these…" Jeremie reached into his pocket. "I found these lying around in Waldo's room after he and Antea pulled a prank on me. Put them in your ear." He gave one to Mr. Schaeffer, and the other one to Mrs. Schaeffer. "Just speak into them, and I will hear you. I…" He tapped his left ear. "I already have one in use."  
"Can you provide us a distraction?" Mrs. Schaeffer asked, placing the small, blue device into her ear as her husband did the same.  
"Leave it to me." Odd replied with a cheeky grin.  
"I hope you know what you're doing…" Ulrich muttered as Odd walked closer to the supercomputer's interface.  
"Hey XANA, want to play a game of tag?" Odd called, casually leaning to the side to avoid a bolt of electricity. "Guess so." Odd reached down. "Well then…" His hand grabbed something. "I guess this means…" He brought it up to his chest level and brought it backwards a little. "Tag!" He threw it at his target. "You're it!" The shoe bounced off of the supercomputer and landed on the floor nearby.

Bolts of electricity flew freely from the supercomputer now, and the group threw themselves on the ground to avoid getting hit directly, though some of the electricity traveled through the metal and shocked them, slightly stunning them in the process. Odd merely smiled, and began to nimbly dodge the deadly electrical bursts of energy. He whooped in exhilaration, and rolled and tumbled across the room, clearly enjoying the thrill of the game of life and death.

"What are you waiting for, professorhead?" he called over to Waldo.

Waldo didn't need to be told twice. Crawling on the floor in a prone position, both he and his wife made it to the elevator and punched a button to get the elevator door opened. The golden-colored doors unlocked and started to slowly open to reveal a dark hole that led downwards into the unknown. Nimble as an elf dancing in the forest, Odd continued to easily evade the shots without getting hit at all. However, he was fatiguing quickly due to exerting too much energy in springing from place to place.

"Go!" Odd yelled, and Waldo descended the stairs in the elevator shaft.

A loud screeching pierced the air around them, and the electricity stopped shooting out for several seconds. The group looked around in time just to see that the panels on the supercomputer were lighting bright enough to put a Christmas tree to shame. The panels coloring changed rapidly from bright purple to dark red, and blue electricity covered the interface throughout. A black ink-like substance was slowly oozing out of the supercomputer, and pooled onto the ground. It wavered slightly, and seemingly leapt towards the escaping couple. Odd tried to stop it by placing his body between it and the retreating Schaeffers, but was knocked out of the way by the blob's brute force.

"No!" Jeremie moaned in despair as it approached the two, scrambling to get back on his feet.  
"Hi-yah!" Ulrich yelled as he popped out of nowhere and tackled the polymorph. "Thought I'd let you steal the spotlight and have it all for yourself?" He jokingly called to Odd.

Odd childishly rolled his eyes and grinned. The last visible parts of Mrs. Schaeffer's head disappeared, and the polymorph rounded on the group in anger. It had half a mind to go after the two meddlesome adults and stop them from beginning or completing their jobs, but XANA felt that he had some unfinished business to deal with before he would kill his creators. Yumi cracked her knuckles and smiled confidently as she got up.

"Just like old times…"

The specter's form wavered again, and it shot up, becoming thinner and taller like a tree growing in fast forward, limbs shooting out like branches, molding itself into the form of a government agent. Its form flickered in and out of existence momentarily before it solidified again. It flexed its knuckles before it curled them up into a fist, and charged at Yumi. Yumi patiently waited for it, never moving from her spot until it was close enough.

"Yumi!" Ulrich screamed. "Move!"

Yumi ignored him and kept waiting, her eyes never leaving the polymorph coming at her with the force of a train. Just when it seemed as if she was surely going to be pummeled into mush, she ducked under the polymorph's lunging fist, and slid between its legs. The polymorph's fist hit the metal with a deafening clang that resounded throughout the mostly closed space of the lab. The polymorph screeched in surprise and anger, and tried to pull out its fist, which was now deeply embedded into the metal.

"Now!" Yumi yelled, and began her barrage of punches and kicks on the specter.

With a rallying cry, the group charged towards it, but stopped short as bolts of electricity were fired from the specter's hand to deter them from coming closer and attacking. With a wrenching noise, it pulled its fist free from the metal, and backhanded Yumi with its newly freed hand, who flew backwards from the force in response. Her back hit the wall, and she lay there in a sitting-up position, stunned from the force of her body against a solid metal wall. The other adults in the group shoved the children behind them with little thought of their own safety, and took up defensive positions.

"Jeremie! Jeremie, do you read me?" Waldo's voice crackled in Jeremie's ear through the communications device.  
"I read you loud and clear." Jeremie responded, touching his left ear with one hand.  
"Jeremie, we have reached the door that leads to the supercomputer, but I cannot open it! XANA must have changed the codes to delay us!"  
"Try to crack them!" Jeremie yelled in response. "We'll keep the polymorph distracted!"  
"I… trying… but… there's a slight… not get shocked!"  
"You're breaking up! I can't hear you!"

The polymorphic specter, as if hearing the conversation that went on between Waldo and Jeremie, grinned evilly, his mouth stretching widely into something not made for a human's facial features. It looked at the floor below it, eyeing it hungrily, as if looking for something. With one fist shooting electricity to separate the group into two, he used the other fist to bring a thundering blow to the lab's floor. Electricity shot everywhere as wires were severed from the sharp metal of the broken lab floor, and a loud creaking noise came from the elevator shaft. With a loud crunching noise, the elevator stops disengaged, and with a mighty groan, the elevator was dislodged from its holding place, ambling down the shaft slowly, but rapidly gaining speed.

With a whoosh as it sped down, the Lyoko Warriors grimaced as they felt the passing wind of the falling elevator through the open door leading to the shaft. Instinctively, Jeremie pressed against his headset, and shouted out the words that he could only hope that Waldo and Antea Schaeffer could hear them before they would get hit by the runaway elevator and crushed under the tremendous force it was gathering as it sped downwards.

"Waldo! Antea! Get out of there, now!"

There was no response. The clanging of the elevator grew louder as it rumbled down the shaft, though the sound was unmatched by the polymorph's mad cackling. Screams of fear and surprise echoed from below the lab level rose to their position before a deafening crash was heard. William clutched his hand into a fist in anger.

"Waldo! Antea! Can you hear me!" Jeremie yelled into the headset.

There was no response- all was deathly silent, save for the horrible laughter of the specter slowly dying down. The specter mock-tilted his head towards the open doors leading to the empty elevator shaft, and gave a dark chuckle when no sound of anything living or struggling to survive came back from the dark elevator shaft after about two minutes. Suddenly, it went on its knees and started to screech in unbearable agony. It raised one hand, and looked in horror as it started de-pixalizing into nothing more than digital dust. Wisps of black smoke rose from the disintegrating arm, and it screeched in agony once more before it looked at the group with pure hate.

With an animalistic cry that sent shivers down the group's spines, it lunged towards them and knocked them aside with one swipe of its super-human-strength-improved arm. It picked up the first person it could get its hands on and walked to the edge of the elevator shaft and prepared to throw her. Yumi, adrenaline coursing through her veins, leapt up and clutched the back of the specter, using her weight to try to topple the specter over backwards and get the child to safety. However, the specter was not in the mood for games, as it knew that its time was rapidly coming to a close, and threw Yumi over his disintegrating form into group, knocking them down once more. The specter lurched backwards, and then forwards, throwing the child towards her doom. It let out one last cruel laugh as its torso disintegrated, then its head in mere seconds.

"Antea!" the group cried as it rushed to save her, recovered from the force of Yumi being thrown against them.

She was gripping the edge of the shaft with her small hands, her knuckles turning white as her grip tightened.

"Hold on!" Yumi cried, reaching out to grasp the child's hand, but moaned in sorrow as disaster struck.

Antea, being a small child and using up most of her physical strength just trying to hold onto the edge, cried out in terror as her grip failed her, and she plunged towards her death. Her eyes widened in her terror, Antea gave one last scream as her body plunged towards the seemingly endless void of the elevator shaft. Jeremie screamed out purely in anger at the loss of his child, and dropped to his knees, sobbing. William, Odd, Ulrich, Yumi, and Clone Aelita dipped their heads in respect, and said nothing to fill the silence.

"…She can't be gone…" Waldo said in disbelief. "…Who will I…? Who will I play with? Who will I take care of as an older brother?"

Jeremie said nothing, and closed his eyes in exhaustion after he looked down into the shaft and saw nothing. Odd did not try to make a joke to try to cheer him up- he knew what it meant to have lost a child.

"Emily…" he whispered, looking back on his life. "Why did you have to go…Why did little Millie have to go too?"

Just when all seemed lost, a pink-haired head popped up, grunting as she made her way to the rest of the group. She clambered onto the floor and panted in exhaustion, little Antea asleep on her back. Antea gently pulled the child off of the piggy-back position on her back, and placed the child onto the floor.

"We thought you could use some help from us." Antea remarked, rubbing her bare feet. "I lost my shoes- the ones that I had been working on for several hours- during the dodge Waldo and I had to do to avoid being crushed to death, but otherwise, I am fine. Waldo is in good condition, but he has a few scratches from the death-trap elevator's raining rubble."

William grinned and visibly relaxed, giving a small punch to Jeremie's shoulder, which Odd replicated. However, Odd had put in a little too much of his enthusiasm, and he received a scowl from the said genius instead of a relieved smile. The group lay back onto the floor, avoiding the hole where the specter had punched, as it was still crackling with energy, and sighed in relief. They had avoided danger and were still alive and well… for now.

[Page Break]

"Okay, the scanners should be fully operational." Waldo declared as he wiped off the sweat from his forehead. "It's your show now, Jeremie."  
"Okay guys, get into the scanner room, except for Antea, Waldo, Waldo, Antea, Akihito, and Clone Aelita, obviously."  
"How, Einstein? In case you haven't noticed, we haven't got an elevator anymore, and there's no way I'm climbing down that creepy shaft."

Jeremie's features changed into a slightly annoyed expression, and he pointed to the back of the Lab room, where a sliding trap door revealed a direct access bypass to the scanner room. Odd mock-sighed and chuckled heartily, climbing down the ladder rungs built into the metal wall, followed by the other Lyoko Warriors.

"Hey, mister." Akihito asked as he tugged on Jeremie's shirt. "What's Lyoko?"  
"It's a secret virtual world that my father-in-law built a long time ago. It was meant to be a safe haven for him and his daughter, but things turned bad because an evil program wanted to rule the world."  
"Oh…" Akihito sighed, still not satisfied with the explanation.  
"Hey, I'm surprised that you didn't think of me." Antea jokingly told her husband.  
"I did, honey! That's why there are three scanners. I made one for each of us."  
"Grandma! Grandpa!" Antea and Waldo called, hugging their grandparents.  
"…I feel old…" Waldo muttered as he hugged them back.  
"_You _feel old." Antea teased back. "I had to wait over twenty years before I saw you again! You got 20 years of no aging, so be happy."  
"We're ready, Jeremie." William called from below, and Jeremie nodded, inserting a CD into the CD-ROM drive.  
"Okay, William, Ulrich, and Odd go first. Transfer William, transfer Ulrich, and transfer Odd. Scanner, and virtualization!"

The three landed on the hard ground of the Forest Sector, dropping ungracefully onto the ground as they were caught off guard by the virtualization process.

"Man... I haven't done this in a long time." Ulrich remarked as he picked himself off of the ground.  
"You said it." came Odd's muffled reply.  
"... Nice outfits." William said, biting back a snicker at Odd's new outfit.

Odd sat up and 'spat' out the virtual grass, glaring at William. A few seconds later, and Yumi virtualized, dropping onto the ground less haphazardly than the guys.

"That doesn't look bad on you, Ulrich." Yumi commented, and Ulrich grinned in pride.

Their outfits were like the ones they had when they were about 15 years old, though Jeremie had modified it to fit their adult bodies. Though most of their outfits had remained the same from 10 years ago, when Jeremie had to modify to their newer form-fitting outfits due to XANA's increasing power, there were definite changes made to each of their outfits. In the place of Yumi's outfit, there was a traditional Japanese dress with her two trademark fans retaining their power of being whipped out at Yumi's will, rather than being physically stored somewhere. William's outfit was a dark blue and white outfit, with electric-blue colored markings as highlights. He retained his giant sword, though it was stored in a carrying case on his back that slightly resembled Ulrich's, for easier carrying and drawing/withdrawing of the said weapon. Ulrich's outfit was the traditional yellow and brown outfit, though his avatar's outfit had the muscles he had been developing over time show- as a form to impress people with, and to reflect his strength both physically, and spiritually, in a fighting spirit sort of way. On his back remained his saber carrying-case, which held his usual dual sabers he had come to appreciate. Odd's outfit was a bright and dark colored purple outfit that outlined his form, though it kept his trademark cat-boy look with the purple ears, light purple and white-marked tail, and the dark-colored claws that protruded from the tips of his purple arrow-shooting gloves. However, no matter how silly their outfits looked the first time, the group came to recognize that their outfits complimented their features whether it was in strength or intelligence.

"Hey, this isn't a fashion show, people. We have to move. There is a Way Tower about North by Northwest about a kilometer from your position. Now, move it!" Jeremie snapped, getting impatient.  
"We're going, we're going..." William grumbled as they started off in the direction indicated. "It's not easy when you're carrying a sword that weighs at least 100 kilograms..."  
"Hey, most rules of physics don't apply to Lyoko, son." Waldo snapped back from the Lab room.

William only snorted in response and ran alongside of two of the other Lyoko Warriors- Ulrich having used his super-sprint ability to move ahead of the rest of the group. When they reached the white-glowing Way Tower, they found Ulrich waiting at the base of the tower, smiling slightly with one eyebrow raised.

"It took you long enough to get here."  
"No thanks to you, Ulrich. If you knew how hard it is to run the whole way here without any assistance from our powers, well..." Odd started but Yumi cut him off.  
"Thanks for waiting, Ulrich." she said, sarcastically.  
"Anytime, Yumi." Ulrich chuckled as he mock-bowed.  
"Guys, enough fooling around. XANA is bound to send monsters onto Lyoko, or at least attack the factory again."  
"Ten-four, sir. Alright, you maggots, we're going to infiltrate November Whiskey Tango, and then we're going to... we're gonna... I don't know what we're going to do, actually."  
"Where'd you learn the American military alphabet, Odd?"  
"Television."  
"Figures. Anyway, proceed into the Way Tower, and I'll start up the program."  
"What sort of program?" William asked.  
"It's a surprise... It wouldn't be a surprise if I told you." came the response.  
"I don't like where this is going..." William muttered, but complied.

All four of the warriors on Lyoko entered the tower, and waited in the middle of the white glowing Eye-of-XANA. Jeremie typed a few controls into the supercomputer interface, and hit enter. Almost immediately, a green ring surrounded each of the warriors present in the tower, and moved from their feet upward, as if scanning them. As if recognizing their digital signatures, the bands changed color appropriate to the Lyoko Warrior it had finished scanning, and moved onto their wrist. The energy solidified, and became part of their suit- a bracelet type object that had an Eye-of-XANA color-colored to their user.

"Energize..." Jeremie said, and typed in a completely new set of commands. The Lyoko Warrior's forms fizzled shortly before all four of them de-pixalized, reappearing in the factory in their Lyoko outfits. "Like them? The bracelets on your wrists allows you to retain your Lyoko forms."  
"If you ask me, Jeremie" Odd said, plucking at his suit. "You should have made me more muscular."  
"Why? Because you're still scrawny?" Ulrich jokingly replied.  
"Why you-"  
"Stop fighting, you guys. We're not going to make any headway if we're going to keep on going like this. Now... Mr. Schaeffer, I believe it is my turn. Virtualize me."  
"Huh? You're going to be virtualized onto Lyoko?" Odd asked, completely taken aback. "Well... this should be hilarious, like the time when we saw his Lyoko form."  
"What did he look like?" Yumi questioned, wanting to know what the private joke behind this was.  
"... I'll show you what I look like... take the controls, Waldo." and with that, he slid open the hatch leading downstairs and climbed down into the scanner room. "Alright, Waldo, start up the process."  
"Hold up, son. I need to remember how these controls work... now... letsee... Fn... and ... F6... and... let's go." With that, he pressed the correct buttons, and the transfer window opened. "Transfer Jeremie, Scanner Jeremie... Virtualization!"

A tense moment passed before Jeremie finally sounded out that he had landed safely in the Forest Sector, though a bit father than where he had sent the other Lyoko Warriors. It took only a few minutes before Jeremie entered the tower and Waldo activated the program Jeremie had used mere moments ago. With a low hum, the machine accessed the files again, and Jeremie felt himself being pulled from the world he was in once more...

... and land with a thump into the real world. He gazed at his friends with an air of pride to him. Instead of his glasses, he had a targeting visor- his virtual eyes had no use for glasses. He wore a suit that was a basic dark blue suit with a belt and a black cape. Within the folds of the inner part of the cape held numerous knives and other throw-able items for his use for defending himself. Strapped to his back was a powerful laser rifle that was deathly accurate with a trained hand, and an empty holster and various pockets for dual pistols and ammunition.

"Nice outfit." He smirked at Odd, who immediately scowled.  
"Hey! You cheated!" Odd retorted. "Now they don't have a chance to have a good laugh..."  
"Cool rifle, Jeremie... did you program that?" William asked, resisting the urge to try out Jeremie's new toy.  
"Actually, it came from playing 40 straight hours of a video game Waldo challenged me to play with him. I had never played a shooting game before. ... Don't touch, William. It's sensitive to touch, and could easily go off and take someone's brain out."

William frowned in response and withdrew his hand.

"... but I can still use it to take out XANA, right?"  
"Of course. What makes you think I'll say no?"

[Page Break]

"... Looks like Halloween came early this year." The driver said as he gazed upon the five Lyoko-Warrior-Outfit-clad adults. "Don't you think you're too old for trick or treating?"  
"Shut up, Francis." William growled. "We have important business to attend to."  
"Easy, buddy. I just thought we were getting invaded by weirdos from outer space. ...I hate aliens."  
"That's nice, Francis." William retorted, rolling his eyes. "Listen, here's our plan... I spent all day trying to devise this commando-type tactics"

[Page Break]

"I can't endanger the children!" Jeremie yelled. "I nearly lost them today, and I don't want to lose them again!" Jeremie scowled and sat on the van floor, crossing his arms.  
"What choice do we have, Jeremie?" Clone Aelita yelled back. "Where can we send them that isn't reachable by technology? XANA would have found them easily in any case. We have to stick together!"  
"I... just don't want to let them go... I don't want to be a bad father..."  
"It's okay Jeremie..." Clone Aelita sighed, patting Jeremie in a comforting manner. "I too care for you guys, even though I was not originally programmed to have these feelings..."  
"Thank you... Clone Aelita... I mean, Aelita."  
"You're Welcome, Jeremie." Clone Aelita responded, pulling the blanket over Jeremie's form in the van.

**Chapter 8 ½- Animal I have Become II  
July 13****th****, 12:52 PM **

She paced, back and forth like a caged animal, snarling and swiping at nothing in particular every few minutes. Something was obviously bothering her, but she could not place her finger on what was troubling her. Was it that the clones were too weak for XANA's high standards? No, they were working perfectly, with the few exceptions of some clones with defects- they obviously had to be removed from XANA's army. Her hands were balled into fists, clenching and unclenching several times before she stopped, a wicked grin spread out across her face. Walking on all fours, each movement precise and skilled, she made her way over to an electronic panel, to which she placed her hand on. She did not flinch, nor show any discernible expression when she felt a dark presence gathering behind her.

"They're coming… and soon." She bluntly stated- her voice altered from growling in an animalistic manner almost constantly in frustration and not using words for so long, knowing that XANA already knew who "they" were when she referred to them.  
"I see…" he replied thoughtfully. "I regret to inform you that your clone 'sister' is no longer under my control, though I do not see how this could be a problem. She is leading them right to my trap…"

Aelita nodded, and continued on working on whatever she was doing- tracking the group's movements. Slightly annoyed that XANA had dismissed Waldo as a low threat to his plans, she continued tracking their movements, puzzling on why they had suddenly changed direction, going South instead of Northward to XANA's current base of operations.

"They seem to have a change of plans… this is not an act of cowardice, this is an act of brilliance…" XANA muttered to himself before straightening up suddenly. "Get ready for their arrival when they finally arrive. Set up an ambush, and wait for them before attacking."

Aelita nodded and went back on all fours again, stalking out of the room, though the endless maze of corridors and sub-buildings, and finally to the outside world. She growled as the light hit her eyes, which were unaccustomed to it for so long and sought shelter underneath a group of trees, grateful for the shade they provided from the blinding and unforgiving sun. From there, she climbed to the canopy after her eyes adjusted to the light, and started to wait, eyes and ears alert for any sound of their arrival.

Like a predator that stalks its prey before the chase and the kill, Aelita considered herself to be hunting for her enemies that were once her friends. Being under XANA's control, she had patience in waiting for them, though slightly irritated at their speed of travel at times. Bored after an hour of waiting with nothing occurring, her ears slightly twitched at the sound of some rustling below. Finding a small animal separated from the rest of its group, Aelita did not think twice before adjusting her body to a more comfortable position and tensing her muscles before leaping from her perch and pouncing on the small animal, digging her claws and fangs into its back and neck respectively.

It soon died from the assault and later attack, and Aelita wasted no time in devouring it and burying the remains. Wanting to get the taste of blood out of her mouth, Aelita climbed back onto the trees, and started searching for a river, or a body of water to where she could wash out the taste. Finding one after a few minutes of searching, she leapt back down to the ground and began to drink at the water, slightly annoyed at the aquatic life and the warm and the taste and appearance of the murky water itself.

A cawing of a bird immediately caught her attention, her reaction being her head to suddenly jerk upwards and to snarl at the bird as it flew over an open space between the trees. Done with her drink and not wanting to be caught off guard from any dangers any longer, stalked along the edge of the pond to a fallen log that was partially submerged in the more swampy area of the forest area. She tested the log before walking on it, keeping her body close to the log while her alert senses were concentrating on any other life form that could be considered dangerous to her well-being.

She stopped midway on the log, interested in a reflection she saw in the clearer parts of the water. It showed a young woman with messy pink hair, claws, and fangs in a red and black body suit. Under the mane of messy pink/slightly-reddish hair lay two wild eyes with a fire to them- green with a tint of red and a gleam of animal intelligence and malicious intent. She raised her clawed hand, and was startled that the reflection raised its hand as well. Realizing that it was her own reflection, it gave her an uneasy feeling that made her lean closer towards the water's edge to take a better look in her curiosity.

She lost her footing, and with a screech of surprise in the short moment she realized what was about to happen, she fell into the water with a loud splash. The air bubbles rapidly rose to the surface before they slowed, stopping altogether after a few moments. Just when the swampy lands were regaining some of their quiet peace, Aelita burst out of the muddy water with a mighty roar, landing roughly on the ground nearby. Growling slightly at her current state, she started to shake off the filth from her outfit. Dirtying a nearby tree in the process of rubbing off the muck, she stopped once she heard the distant sounds of an automobile coming closer towards the location of the base.

Grinning evilly, she abandoned her efforts of cleaning herself from the grime and took off towards the sound of the automobile on all fours. Leaping expertly from tree to tree, as if she had been doing it all her life, she came to a stop on a branch overlooking a path cleared by humans a long time ago before the abandonment of the buildings which now made XANA's base of operations. Turning her head slightly she saw a black van coming towards her location. Her muscles tensed and readied for the action she was about to perform, and with a loud screech and a powerful push-off from her perch, she landed with a loud thump onto the moving vehicle.

Smirking at the van's occupants' sudden cries of terror, she stalked towards a nearby window. The van swerved suddenly several times and would have thrown her off had she not dug her claws into the metal of the van to hold on. Loudly growling at their attempts to get rid of her, she began her climb towards a nearby window again. The van begun to go in a straight path again, and she was perched over a side window. A low tree branch that hung low over the path forced her to close her eyes and duck until it had completely passed by. When she righted herself and opened her eyes again, she found herself looking into a muzzle of a gun positioned between her eyes.

**End of Chapter 8**

* * *

A.N. So far, so good. I plan to make the next chapter about 5,000 words, which should wrap it up quite nicely. An explanation for the whole series should appear after I finish this. The description of their outfits were meant to be not as detailed- I just wanted to move on, and not spend 1,000 words describing about each of their outfits. Besides, you can use your imagination.


	9. Team Lyoko versus Team XANA

**Code: Apocalypse Chapter 9- Team Lyoko vs. Team XANA  
July 13, 13:00**

"What in Lyoko?" Jeremie yelled in a panic, swerving the van wildly in response.  
"It's some sort pink haired freak!" Francis shouted back as he stuck his head partly out the window at the van's roof, earning scowls and a 'humph' from the two pink-heads in the van. "…I didn't mean you guys!" he muttered apologetically to both of them. **  
**"Que ja-" Antea began, obviously angered.  
"Shhh!" the child insisted.  
"Don't shoot her!" Jeremie shouted to Francis, who was half on the roof, and half in the van.  
"I didn't claim 'shotgun' this time to do nothing. This XANA person of yours has given me a lot of trouble- and I hate trouble." Francis shouted back.

With that, he clumsily climbed out of the van's open windows, and readily faced his opponent. Gripping the muzzle of the auto-shotgun he borrowed from William, he struggled to hold onto the roof, while Aelita had claws that easily pierced through the metal to maintain a firm grip on the moving vehicle.

"… What a dumb, stupid, idiot." He heard Jeremie mutter.  
"Come here, beastie- I'll show you who _is_ top dog around here." Francis taunted, curling the fingers of an outstretched hand in a 'come on' gesture.

Aelita growled and leapt with a screech, but Francis easily stopped her attack and smacked her away by hitting the butt of the gun against her. Half-blinded, stumbling, and yowling in pain, she managed to cling onto the van with great difficulty and regain her balance. Francis merely smirked and leveled the gun again, aiming straight for her heart. The gun went off, and Aelita pressed close to the van to avoid the fatal spray of bullets from the shotgun. The bullets whizzed over her head, and thus provoked her into attacking in a blind rage.

"Whoa!" Francis shouted as he avoided a deadly swipe of Aelita's lengthened claws. "Psyche!' he shouted, rebounding and slamming the gun into her stomach.

Her breath was forced out of her lungs, and she stumbled backwards, dangerously close to the edge of the van. A hand moved its way to the belt around her waist and fingers curled around a small, sharp metal object. A quick flick of her wrist made the small dagger fly through the air towards Francis, who had to use the gun as a baseball bat and slap the deadly projectile away. He did not see the fist coming, and earned himself an uppercut from his opponent that caught him in the jaw, sending him flying backwards.

The gun flew out of his hands and skittered on the roof. Francis landed near the windshield, and he desperately clung on for his life. The van sped on at 125 Kilometers per Hour, and the ground below them flew past. The vegetation that they drove past was nothing more than green blurs to their eyes. He reached for the automatic shotgun, but the gun had begun to slide away from him in accordance to the laws of motion. He groaned, and watched as it slid off of the roof, and hung by its shoulder strap on the black hook-like things that protruded from the exterior of the van's surface. He sighed in relief at the sight of his gun saved by the van's exterior features and was too distracted to pay attention to his surroundings.

"Francis, watch out!" Ulrich yelled from an open window, jolting him out of his train of thought, and Francis rolled away in time to have claws scratching against the roof of the wan- leaving several deep gouges in the metal- where his head previously was.  
"Get off of my property!" Francis yelled as he crouched into a springing position and tackled her.

Caught off guard, Aelita was thrown off of the van, and sent tumbling into the jungle vegetation. Her body slammed into the rocky ground and was sent rolling out of the sight of the Lyoko Warriors until her body hit a large rock and skidded on the ground. Unable to move most of her body for the moment, she only released a howl of anger and slammed a fist on the ground.

Meanwhile, Francis had accidentally gone too far in his tackle and was clinging onto the edge of the van for dear life. He groaned as finger after finger gave way, and would have fallen to his possible death, had the van's side door not opened and several arms roughly grabbed his body and dragged him inside. Panting in exhaustion, he looked up, and into the eyes of his rescuers, who sighed in response to his brash actions.

"What have you got to say for yourself?" Ulrich chided, obviously not pleased that Francis was heavier than he appeared to be.  
"Uh…Trespassers will be shot? Err… survivors will be shot again?" Francis grinned sheepishly. "Look, I did not kill her, alright, so stop with the looks."  
"Well, at least we won't have to deal with her for a while… I can only guess at the other surprises XANA has in store for us…"  
"Speaking of which… look up ahead!" William shouted.

Tires squealing, the van screeched to a stop suddenly, flinging the screaming and unbuckled passengers against the back of the two front seats. Odd made an angry noise that was muffled from the mass of bodies pressing against him from the van's sudden stop. Jeremie wordlessly pointed at the direction of the windshield, mouth agape and sapphire eyes widened in surprise. They righted themselves in time to see a group of large, white buildings that were clustered together in an opening in the woods. They towered above the trees, and though the buildings themselves had deteriorated in their condition considerably, the buildings radiated a sense of power and order among the chaos and the disorderly wilderness of the forest.

There were red and black forms moving back and forth, back and forth in front of the buildings. Upon a closer look, the Lyoko Warriors were astounded and horrified to see that the forms were themselves- or at least the darker, cloned versions of themselves bred only to kill humanity. The hybrids did not yet detect the van with any of their senses- Jeremie had stopped it as soon as he had noticed the building and the hybrids guarding its well kept secrets.

"They look like… us…" William observed as he looked at the hybrid clone of himself uneasily. "Well, except that they look more evil and deadly."  
"Shhh!" Jeremie warned, keeping a wary eye on them.

The hybrids, however, did not pick up on the conversation, mutely walking around the perimeter of the building. The van was well hidden in the dark of the forest due to its black coloring. Jeremie shut off the van, whose engine began to idle, and opened the driver's side door slowly, being careful not to make any sudden noises or movement that might attract the attention of the hybrid clones. Opening the side door of the van, the other members of the group filed out one by one, and remained in the darkness for a period of time, watching, waiting, and scrutinizing the hybrids as they trudged around.

"I say they have to go. I am sure that we want the least amount of interference on our mission" William whispered as he was passing around the weapons he had purchased to the unarmed adults of the group.

Francis gave a sly grin and unhooked the gun from where it was held on the exterior of the van, and fished around the van for ammunition. Fishing out a box of shotgun shells, he reloaded the shotgun to its full holding capacity and stored the remaining ammunition in a leather pouch he had on his belt. Waldo held the UZI up warily, unsure of how to even work the sub-machine gun without causing some sort of friendly fire. Antea strapped the Hunting Rifle to her back and threw him a set of dual pistols at him to use instead. Jeremie's unskilled hands clutched his laser rifle nervously, pointing the rifle in the opposite direction of the clones.

"You idiot!" William angrily hissed to Jeremie. "You're gonna kill us all with the way you're holding that thing. Let me have that-" William made a grab for Jeremie's rifle, and a fight ensued over the said weapon. Somehow during the fight, the rifle was turned towards the clones. Jeremie, noticing this, yelled, his eyes wide in terror.

"William, no!" Jeremie made a desperate snatch for the weapon, but was cut short by the ringing blast of his rifle.

A blue laser shot out of the barrel, and it sped towards the direction of the hybrids. The group stared in mute fascination, their eyes tracking the laser's path as it cut through an arm of one of the Ulrich clones. The hybrid shrieked in pain, as liquid spurted out of its damaged appendage. However, it was not blood that flowed from the wound and collected onto the ground below- it was a substance as black as the night and almost tar-like in appearance. The other hybrids patrolling around the area snapped their heads up in attention, following the trajectory of the laser rifle's path and locating its source to the group of dumbstruck humans hiding under the shade of a bunch of trees. They shrieked upon sighting the humans, and immediately rushed towards them, including the now-injured Ulrich clone.

"Who's the idiot, now?" Jeremie spat bitterly as he positioned his rifle in the direction facing the oncoming horde.  
"Einstein… how long… or how durable is this thing?" Odd said, pointing to the purple bracelet on his wrist.  
"It should last until you lose all your life points, to which you would be immediately materialized onto Earth. It does not really matter how far away you are from the supercomputer when you are wearing your bracelets… I upgraded the supercomputer to have an improved range…" Jeremie explained nervously.  
"Well, then, let's put it to the test. Flèches Laser!" Odd shouted, immediately scoring a hit on a William clone. "Hah ha! This is fun! Hey, can we make this into a contest?"  
"Stop fooling around, Odd! We need all hands on deck here." Ulrich muttered, slashing at one of his clones with his sword, but finding his hits blocked by a twisted version of his saber that the clone was holding in its hand.

Ulrich parried the clone's slashes, slashing with his blade and avoiding the slashes of his counterpart. He soon found himself dueling two of his clones, and then three. Though a bit rusty on his fighting skills on sword-fighting, he was able to hold off their attacks for a while. The sound of gunfire and yells echoed distantly around him, but he kept his mind off of them, choosing instead to focus on his three opponents, all of them willing to fight and defeat the enemy with equal fervor. Knowing he was fighting a losing battle, he pushed them back so that they staggered two meters away from him, and shouted the first word that came into his mind.

"Triplicate!" He yelled, and two copies blasted out of him to either side of him, blades drawn. "Supersprint!" He and his copies rushed to engage their opponents- one on one.

Meanwhile, Yumi was a bit unsettled about fighting. Though she normally had no qualms about fighting XANA and beating him and his minions time after time, she knew there was something different about the opponents they were fighting this time- and this thought stopped her from pulling out all the stops and slaying them like a gung-ho type of warrior would. She noticed that they acted too human to be purely made of the stuff XANA created them from- these things were not pure polymorphic specters. They had emotions- basic human ones, but emotions nonetheless- like anger, pain, and the desire and determination to kill no matter what the cost was. They were fierce, and rightly feared.

With a slight hesitation, she threw a fan, and winced as the clones cried in pain upon the impact of the sharp metal on their skin. Black substance dripped from their wounded bodies, and they hissed in anger before rushing. A mere flick of the wrist, a toss of another fan, and their lifeless bodies lay on their floor, wounds oozing with the black substance. Yumi bit back a cry of horror as she caught her retuning fans. She had realized that she had committed murder- what small percentage of human there were in the clones, they were still human nonetheless. However, the screech of an oncoming enemy caught her attention, and she forced her thoughts away from her.

"I'm getting too old for this." Waldo said as he took down a Yumi clone. "Let's hope there's no Aelita clones besides the one helping us- I simply cannot bring myself to shoot at my daughter- no matter if it is a clone or not."

Odd was shooting Laser Arrows left and right, taking down multiple clones, and groaned when he finally heard the clicking sounds of an empty weapon. Groaning, he hid behind a tree as metal fans whizzed over his hair- the fans nicking some of it off as they passed by. William tossed him a pistol that he had just finished reloading, and Odd expertly caught it in his hand and started to fire at the clones, using the tree as a cover. He heard something bang behind him and a small gust of wind pass over his head, and he, startled, whirled around into a sitting position and dropped the pistol on the ground. He turned around just in time for him to come face to face with a clone of himself leveling its Laser arrow shooting glove to his forehead. Odd's hand scrambled for the pistol, but Odd suddenly found that he couldn't reach it anymore- the clone had kicked it away. Just before the clone could fire, a loud bang sounded out, and the Odd clone collapsed into nothing more than a large puddle of a black substance. Behind Odd, Ulrich stood proudly, holding one of Waldo's guns, the barrel still smoking slightly.

"What did you do that for? I totally had him!" Odd protested, turning around to face him. "… besides, why did you shoot it in the- I mean my face?"  
"One, because you were about to have your butt handed to you. Two, because it's amusing to pick on you and get you so worked up about something. Three, it's because I still have not forgiven you for telling everyone about the incident in the pool."  
"Oh, yeah…" Odd scratched the back of his head.  
"No time, we have to retreat. There's too many of them."

Ulrich roughly picked Odd up to his feet and snatched the fallen pistol from the ground, tossing it to Odd again. Odd fumbled the pistol a little before he was able to maintain a grip on it, and the two stole away into the woods, followed by the other members of the group. The children were thrust into the middle of the semi-circle the group had made for protection. The adults fired at the pursuing clones and, finding a small cave half-buried by the dead leaves accumulated over the years, ducked inside and moved to the farthest recesses of the cave to stay hidden from the clones' sight.

Footsteps fell around them, and the group fell silent, not daring to even breathe, for fear that somehow, their enemies might pick those sounds up, and trace the location to the cave that the group currently inhabited. A jumble of angry snarls and voices speaking in crude, short sentences echoed around in the forest, eventually fading away into silence as the clones moved on in search for the foes they had been fighting just moments ago. The group breathed a sigh of relief as the last of the clones moved away from their area. Francis in particular gave a loud sigh, and pulled something out of his pocket- a bundle wrapped in brown paper.

"Francis isn't that what you picked up along the ride here?" Jeremie whispered.  
"Yeah, it is. I got it from an old friend of mine."  
"What is it?"  
"It's something that will go boom and literally blow the roof off of this XANA's base of operations."  
"Wait, what?"  
"It's a bomb, smart one. You know, a bunch of explosives packed into a container to be later detonated?"  
"I know what a bomb is." Jeremie snapped back, obviously annoyed.  
"He calls himself… well…"  
"That's not important."  
"Hey!" Francis interjected, angered at not being able to finish his sentence. "I'll have you know that-"  
"Shh!" Yumi hissed, freezing in position as footsteps padded by almost silently.

The group held their breath again, and waited until the footsteps padded away. They waited for several minutes in case the clones decided to check around the area they were hiding in before they poked their heads out and looked around.

"Looks clear…" said Jeremie as he cleared the low cave.  
"I say we should have put on a camouflage disguise over our regular clothing." Ulrich muttered under his breath.  
"I second that."  
"Just roll around in the mud and leaves here."  
"No, Ulrich. That won't help. Just… follow my lead."

Using the cover of the trees and their surroundings, Jeremie made his way over the aging buildings. Silently sneaking to a back door, they hesitated in going into the building- before them lay weight sensors lying on the ground around the entranceway, along with other protective measures. Groaning, they backtracked and moved away from the door, wary of accidentally setting it off and alarming XANA to its unwanted guests. Odd found a small window a little ways away from the doorway, and a few old metal 55-gallon barrels that could be used as leverage to get to that point. Stabilizing his weight on the barrels and peering through a small, dusty window and deeming it safe, Odd made hand gestures towards the other members of the group to alert them to the possibility of entering through the said window.

William, whose father was an expert on security and bomb mechanics, shooed Odd away from the barrels before balancing himself on it, and checked around the window pane for any pressure sensors. Grinning after a moment's inspection, he gave the thumbs-up sign, and started to press his palm against the center of the pane of glass. Scowling when the window refused to give way, he applied more and more pressure until he heard the wood around it start cracking. Several hard shoves later, and the window pane gave way, the wood splintered into pieces and clattered almost silently onto the floor. The glass however, was an exception- William had pushed too hard, and made the glass push out of the pane and smash onto the floor below with a loud, tinkling sound.

"Oops." William apologetically said; slightly sweat dropping when he turned around to see the group glaring at him.  
"Just shut up and get inside before XANA's clones get here."

With that, the group pushed him through the window, and he landed, his boots crunching the class into smaller fragments. One by one, they entered, keeping guard and suspiciously looking at all corners of the room with their weapons drawn. The last one to go through the window waved his weapon slowly, scanning the wooded area before he joined the rest of the group. Sighing and relaxing the grip on his weapon, Jeremie let his arm drop and took a good look of the room they were in. It was room that resembled a modern mad scientist's lab from a horror movie.

Various beakers and flasks were scattered around the room on metal tables, choked with dust from years of not being used. Outdated computers on the same table lay silent, the blank screens facing them like eyes- making the Lyoko Warriors feel like they were being constantly watched by their enemy. On the other side of the room, where it appeared as if it was used more recently, newer computers were active, their command panels opened with their symbols and codes scrolling around their screen in green, against a completely black background.

"Kind of makes you think of the matrix, huh, Jeremie?" Odd asked, staring at the codes and wondering what they meant.  
"This is neither the time, nor the place, Odd." Jeremie replied, checking the ammunition gauge.  
"I'm happy that I have a larger ammunition storage for my laser rifle."  
"Well, what about me? I'm out of laser arrows and I only have to rely on a pistol. Can't you program me some more Laser Arrows?"  
"This is not Lyoko, Odd." Jeremie countered as he loaded a full clip. "I cannot program you a new batch of Laser Arrows any time you wish."  
"Here you go." William tossed Odd an empty UZI, and Odd loaded ammunition into the gun. "This should last you… let's hope that you don't have that much of an itchy trigger finger, otherwise you're gonna waste the whole ammo cache within a few seconds."  
"I promise nothing." Odd gave a sly grin.  
"Mother of Mercy…"

Clone Aelita cautiously pressed her hand against the touch-panel and stifled a cry of happiness when it responded by glowing green and allowed the door to slide open for them. Two by two, they exited the room, cautiously checking around them for any sign of potential trouble for them. Nodding curtly to each other, they walked- backs against the wall with their heads turned slightly to the intersection of corridors. The halls were deathly silent, save for the sounds of their feet lightly hitting the ground, the clinking sounds of their guns on their shoulder straps, and ammunition lightly hitting each other in their pockets.

A loud clunk behind them unnerved them, however, and they looked around when cautiously like trapped animals, their heads whipping around in their perseverance to locate and identify who or what made the sound. The source remained hidden, however, though the sounds were getting louder and louder, coming closer and closer to their location. Beads of sweat formed on their foreheads and cascaded down their faces.

They held their breath- they dared not breathe as panic seized their minds and bodies. Their heads whipped around to face a corridor leading off into the dark. They silently gasped as the heavy footsteps stopped, and a pair of bright red eyes glowed maliciously in the dark. With frightened cries, silence and secrecy were forgotten as the group thundered down the corridor. The scarlet eyes narrowed before their owner gave pursuit. Light glinted off of its blue-tinted metal armor, and as the group looked behind them, their eyes widened when they saw a menacing robot chasing after them with an almost inhuman speed.

"You didn't tell me about these things!" Jeremie cried to Clone Aelita, struggling to catch his breath.  
"I didn't know!" Clone Aelita easily picked Jeremie up and ran without any hesitation in her running.

TSSEWW!

The robot had lifted one of its arms in their direction and had fired a blast of energy at their retreating backs. It hit the William directly in the back, causing him to stumble and attempt to run awkwardly.

"Mother of Mercy- it hurts!"  
"Hold on, I got you!"

With that, Ulrich put on of Williams arms on his shoulder, assisting in William's stabilization. With Odd's help, William was able to run at almost his normal speed. Waldo whipped around, running backwards, and pulled out his UZI. Shifting his body to miss another blast of energy that came from the robot in its attempts to stop them, Waldo fired a round from his weapons, emptying the ammunition in his weapon in a matter of a few seconds by keeping his finger firmly placed on the UZI's trigger.

"I need a reload!"

The UZI was tossed towards his wife, who caught it with a little difficulty, and tossed him hers, so he could continue to fire. With hands shaking, she made the slow reload of Waldo's weapon. Waldo continued to fire in short bursts, dismayed when the robot showed no signs of slowing down, even with the large amount of damage it had sustained from his attacks. Francis was busy running and fumbling through his pockets for ammunition to attempt to make his attack on the robot.

"Daddy!" Antea yelled, slowing down from the toll running took on her small body.  
"Grab on!" Jeremie extended his hand. Their hands met, and Jeremie's hand curled around hers to pull her up.  
"Yumi, take care of Akihito!" Ulrich shouted. "William, can you run with only Odd's help?"  
"I think I can manage…" William replied weakly.

Yumi whirled around and threw both of her fans with a warrior's cry. The fans whizzed through the air and made contact with the robot's front armor, leaving two small scratches on its armor. The robot did not seem bothered at all- in fact, it seemed more determined now to put down the nuisances. With a dismayed cry, she caught both of her fans and picked Akihito up as she whirled around again to dodge another blast. Ulrich broke away from supporting William, securing Waldo on his back before continuing on. From his mouth escaped a surprised cry when he saw another robot patrolling the halls in front of them.

"WHOA!"

The group stumbled as they attempted to dodge the other robot. With a mechanical cry, it started to chase the group, hissing angrily with loud clicking noises when it was pushed aside by its damaged companion.

"Oh man, now there are two of them." Odd groaned.  
"I think we can lose them if… *huff* we can… *huff* hide in a *huff* secure room *huff* *huff* … man, you humans are heavy!"  
"Tell me about it…" Odd muttered.  
"Sorry…" Jeremie replied apologetically.  
"… and how do we do that?" William replied, attempting to shift more of his weight off of Odd and onto his legs instead.  
"Simple- when we turn a corner, I *huff* will press my hand against a panel and *pant* we will use it to escape these jerks…"  
"Let's deux it!"

Clone Aelita nodded, and abruptly changed direction into a corner. Slamming her hand onto the panel, a green light moved up and down, scanning her handprint before flashing green and allowing the metal door to slide open for the group. Skidding and almost sliding, they made their way to Clone Aelita's location and in through the door. It worked- the robots were thrown off- thanks to the speed they were going- they were unable to stop their momentum efficiently.

"Go! Get in here!" she yelled, waving an impatient hand to signal the adults to go this way.

Shoving the last of them in roughly, she watched with growing apprehension as the two robots made their way towards their location again, after going in the wrong direction for several seconds.

'Smash the panel…' the voice said.  
"Huh?" Clone Aelita said out loud.  
'Smash the panel…'  
"If you say so…" Clone Aelita replied uncertainly.

Her left hand closed into a fist, and smashed into the green-lit hand-scanning panel, sending sparks and broken shards of glass everywhere. Red lights around the door flashed, and an alarm sounded. The door began to close, and Clone Aelita leapt in without fanfare, landing in a heap. Loud clangs echoed from behind the door- the robots obviously were unable to stop themselves from colliding with the metal door. Panting, she sighed with relief and shakily made her way up. The group was still looking at the door at a safe distance of at least 3 meters away, which now had two dents in it, and wondering how long it would take before their hiding place was breached by XANA's minions.

"Where are we…?" Jeremie asked, stunned at the electronics around them.  
"The supercomputer room…" Clone Aelita responded, also in awe. "Let's deux this?" she asked Odd, turning to him with one eyebrow raised.  
"It's a pun, okay. There were two of them, we're in France, and it's a play on the words 'let's do-'"  
"Alright, enough, before you ruin the pun." Ulrich muttered.  
"Too late!" Odd gave a wide grin.

Ulrich rolled his eyes, and turned around, eyes widening when he came face to face with XANA-Aelita, the human incarnation of XANA not too far from her.

"You didn't possibly think that you were going to get rid of me that easily." She gave a wide grin and pushed off of the wall she was leaning on, approaching them menacingly.  
"Oh, crap…" was all Odd could say.

They had walked straight into the lion's den.


	10. Trust In My Self Righteous Suicide

**AN:** Apparently, the 24 hour clock does not have AM/PM. I apologize for the confusion (Ch. 9 has been edited, the previous chapters have not). XANA had been added to the ending chapters during the edit of Ch 9.

It is advisable that you do not replicate the actions here (especially the pressure points. That's a no-no).  
-

**Code Apocalypse: Chapter 10- "Trust… in…. my…. Self-Righteous Suicide"  
****July 13, 15:45  
**

"Uh…" Odd said, backing away slowly from the possessed Aelita. "Can't we just talk about this like the civil people we are?"  
"Silence, you fool!" XANA-Aelita hissed, wild eyes training on his.  
"Aelita!" Jeremie yelled, causing her to stop and direct her gaze to him with a snarl. "Aelita, please, stop…" he reached out and grabbed her arm in one swift motion.

Her emerald eyes flashed dangerously, but he held on, his hand shaking nervously. Clicking sounds that echoed around the room sounded as guns were loaded and trained on Aelita. A low growl sounded in her throat, and Jeremie gulped, his anxiety-filled eyes searching within her orbs for something recognizable, something that resembled human. His face whitened when he saw that there was nothing in those eyes, save for the hungry look in them that resembled a shark. The thudding on the door behind them continued to sound, but the door firmly held, keeping the robots out for the moment.

"Aelita… please… remember us… please remember… me… your kids…your friends… your parents…" Her response was for the growl only to sharply increase in volume and ferocity.  
"It's no use." XANA gave a dark chuckle. "She's too far gone… and I must thank you for delivering the old man to my doorstep… it would make extinguishing his pitiful existence much easier…" He nodded to Waldo and gave an evil grin.  
"You're not killing anyone today." William pointed his automatic shotgun in XANA's direction. "I want my revenge for the life you stole from me… for making me into a monster… for forcing me to participate in your sick…" XANA's grin grew wider. "… and your twisted, inhumane schemes!"  
"Ah, William… I nearly forgot about you… how rude of me…" his gaze travelled to Clone Aelita. "You"  
"Me" she coolly replied, a faint trace of a smile on her face.  
"Your life is nothing. Your existence has no meaning. I often wonder why you continue to exist."  
"As these humans put it in theological terms, 'go to hell'". XANA's expression turned into an angry glare.  
"No mercy, Aelita. Now, sic them."

With a painful twist of Jeremie's arm, she freed herself from his hold and slammed his back against the cold metal floor. She pinned him down onto the ground with a snarl, curling a hand around his neck without actually squeezing it with the intention to kill. Jeremie attempted to free himself by pulling her hand away, but found himself picked up and slammed against the ground again. Her head whipped up to meet the stunned group, who were unable to determine whether to shoot at XANA and kill him- possibly letting Aelita kill Jeremie in the process-, or to kill Aelita and risk hurting Jeremie. XANA stood behind her, a grim smile of triumph directed towards the stunned Warriors.

"It seems that we have reached an impasse. You can kill either me and risk Aelita squeezing Jeremie's jugular vein and strangle him to death, or you can kill her to free Jeremie. Perhaps you might be able to kill both of us, but the question is… are you willing to?"  
"Shut up, XANA!" Odd snarled.  
"Such ferocious temper… humans… perhaps you might be willing to surrender and lay your arms down… and I shall reward you by giving you a quick death instead of a slow and painful one. Perhaps having a quick death would still be equally painful, perhaps it might not. So… what will your choice be?"  
"What about this option?" Francis grinned and proudly presented the bomb. "It might be small, but it packs a lot of punch."  
"Fool…" XANA hissed, realizing what the item was after a quick scan of it. "…You risk killing your allies to save the infernal race of humanity? It is a noble, but a very foolish act indeed."  
"Who said that anyone else is going to die?"

With that, he tore off the paper with one fluid movement, the glint of the shiny metal catching the eye of everyone present in the room. Francis smirked and with a devilish twinkle in his eyes, winked at Yumi. Yumi stared at him for a moment, utterly confused before giving a small smile in understanding and winking back. Aelita gave a deep growl, as her attention was directed towards Francis, but it was suddenly cut off when Yumi's fist collided with her Solar Plexus. The breath forced out of her lungs, Aelita let go of Jeremie and rubbed the wounded area instinctively.

Yumi jabbed the part under Aelita's chin and began to apply pressure. Aelita's eyes narrowed and she swiped at Yumi, but her attack didn't connect- her body slumped as she was lost in the darkness of unconsciousness as Yumi applied more pressure to the area. Jeremie groaned and shifted the weight off of him, lying her body down on the ground gently. Even in her unconscious state, she still appeared as if she was going to attack them at any moment- though her eyes were closed, her fingers seemed to be twitching a little, and her mouth slightly curving into a snarl. Yumi cracked her knuckles and gave a small shrug to the surprised group.

"I've been taking classes on where pressure points were, in part of my lessons in hand-to-hand combat." She explained.  
"Actually, I was egging you on so that you would make a comment supporting my wild claim of blowing thins thing up here and now." Francis said, still holding the bomb with his outstretched hands.  
"Just go with it!" Odd hissed.

XANA, however, did not look bothered, or even angered at the turn of events. Instead, he gave a devious smirk and snapped his fingers. Almost instantly, the door behind them started thudding harder and harder as the sound and the ferocity of the pouching increased before suddenly cutting off. Ulrich out his ear to the door and listened for any kind of sound, no matter how loud or quiet it was. A loud crunching sound echoed across the room as the door was punched with the ferocity equal to that of a trapped animal's. Ulrich gave a shout of surprise and scurried away from the door as quickly as he could, just in time for the door to be punched once more and fall off of its hinges- slamming onto the cold floor below. Thick dust swirled around the air, obscuring most of what lay behind the formerly upright door.

The metal of a hulking electronic robot dimly glinted in the dust-choked sunlight, which instantly caught the group's attention. A quick shout had the group scatter to all corners of the room. They made it just in time to see a red laser had blast vaporized the ground where they had formerly been on- disintegrating everything up to the bare concrete flooring below. Jeremie gasped softly at what had fired such a destructive blast, and XANA gave a dark chuckle in response.

"You didn't think that all of the droids I had created and rebooted were the same obsolete models that I knew you could easily dispatch? No, I suppose you had thought that. As with the clones, they each have a level that they correspond to, which is given based on their skills, their vitality, and strength." XANA remarked, watching as the higher ranking robots filled the room and began cornering the scattered group against the metal-clad walls. "The clones you had met outside, wandering about the grounds, were the Level 1 clones- the clones that were close to being rejected and tossed aside. Now, prepare to meet the level 4 robots. It's a shame I was only able to only create one of each of the Lyoko Warriors that were precisely on par with the particularly exceptional skills you displayed during your fights on Lyoko." XANA continued, smirking as they realized they were completely trapped. "In just less than two hours from now, the clones and the robots I had specifically designed to create mass chaos and destruction will be deployed. Cities upon cities will fall as hundreds upon thousands of humans will be slain, their technology turned against them. I have personally signed their death sentences myself using the science and technology the humans had created in an attempt to protect themselves from harm. Now… prepare to receive your death sentence." A snap of his fingers, and the robot's arm cannons leveled to the cornered group members, pulsing as they charged with electrical energy.  
"Aelita…" Odd whispered to the Clone Aelita. "Do you still have your super-strength?"  
"Yeah… why?" she whispered back, keeping an eye on the sparking orb of electricity that was growing in the robot's open palm.

"I have a plan…"  
"Don't do anything stupid, Odd…"  
"I won't… don't worry about it…" Odd winked and motioned for her to grab on to his arms.

Perplexed, Clone Aelita did so, and firmly secured her arms with his. Odd gave a sly smile and whispered his plan into her ear. Nodding, and with a mighty roar, flung him towards one of the robots currently inhabiting the room. Though her throw was not nearly as powerful enough as she would have liked, Odd felt relieved when he easily closed the distance between them. With a high-pitched, ethereal screech that would have caused any sane person to cover their ears to protect them from being ruined, he slammed into the robot and clung on like a frightened cat would do to any object within reach. Using his weight as an advantage, he forced the robot to stagger to the side and fire, obliterating one of its partners in the process.

The events that happened next were simply utter chaos- laser blasts and bullets were being traded back and forth. Even XANA had to dodge a few particularly lethal energy discharges to avoid being wiped out sooner than he would have wanted to. Electricity sparked as wiring and electrical components were cut into, forcing the part of the building to have a small electrical shortage before the back-up generators kicked in.

"I hate robots!" Francis yelled as he ran away from a particularly resilient droid that was chasing after him.  
"I've got you!" Ulrich yelled, using his supersprint to assist him in pushing him off of the ground, into the air, and onto the troublesome droid.

He covered its sensors with an arm, and tried to get at one of his sabers with his other arm. The robot gave a small grunt and attempted to buck him off, with little success. Ulrich groaned and clung on, tightening his grip on his saber to prevent it from slipping out of his hand. Struggling to maintain his grip, he shifted into a more secure position before shouting out the words he never thought he would get to say again.

"Ahhh! Impact!" he yelled, digging the saber into the robot's "head", pushing the saber in as hard as he possibly could.

By now, the robot had managed to locate the source of its tormenter and attempt to remove him from its barely functioning body. Grasping the scruff of Ulrich's neck with an enormous metal hand, it flung him off of its body, causing him to skid across the room. Losing the energy to power its systems, it tried to pry the saber out of itself, but only managed to make its situation worse, thereby spelling out its own doom. It fell to the floor with a great thunderous crash, the bright red "eyes" dimming as its electrical core failed to deliver the energy needed by the robot to continue functioning properly.

Ulrich gave a grim smile and retrieved his saber, bringing its twin out with a flourish of his other hand. He pointed one of his swords at an amused XANA, who summoned his black and blood-red sword with a wave of his own "arm". XANA brought the flat side of his sword to his head, and touched his "forehead" with it, accepting the challenge Ulrich proposed. With both sides using their respective powers, they charged at each other and clashed, red and blue sparks flying from the blades upon their impact with the other. Jeremie fired blasts from his rifle at one of the last two remaining robots in the room, using one of its fallen comrades as a temporary shield.

"Ow!" Yumi shouted as a laser grazed her arm.

Yumi shook her arm a bit as the affected part winked out of existence and came back again. The bracelet flashed '-30' in red lettering shortly before disappearing and shortly displaying her total life points left before she would be materialized back into the tower she had been energized in. Scowling angrily at the perpetrator, she tossed her fans in hopes it would enrage it enough for its aim to start losing its accuracy. It worked- though the fans had barely made a dent in its armor, the robot had reclassified her as a bigger threat, and started to rapidly fire weaker blasts of energy, which Yumi dodged easily.

Silently thanking the years she had spent in gymnastics in an attempt to make herself more flexible when fighting her adversaries in Pencak-Silat as she caught her returning fans, she executed backflips with ease, dodging around its wildly fired blasts while getting closer and closer to it. Though XANA might have not noticed it, she had developed her close-combat fighting techniques. Using her pent-up fury to further power her attacks, she began her assault with a barrage of kicks, pushing the robot exactly where she wanted it with every slam of her foot against its metal plating.

Too focused on trying to dodge Yumi's attack to keep from being beaten from existence, the robot had backed up into the crossfire that raged between Odd, Francis, Clone Aelita, William, and the other droid. Its metal was shredded by the massive amounts of fire being exchanged between the five, and it circuitry was increasingly being damaged as it struggled to regain the ground it had lost in the fight.

"Hasta la vista, baby!" Yumi said in her best Arnold Schwarzenegger impressionist voice before she tossed her fans to slice through the wiring exposed by the bullets and ill-aimed laser blasts from its comrade.

A flick of the wrist and a toss of a fan later, the robot was felled, leaving a clear path for the others to eliminate the last remaining robot. The group was eager to finish the battle as quickly as they could, for the surrounding area was becoming dangerous for them to continue fighting. Electricity was flying everywhere as severed wires protruded ominously from the damaged supercomputer, walls, and the ceiling, where holes had been created from the battle.

Wrestling with indecision for a moment, William picked up one of the live cables hanging from the ceiling and jammed it against the robot, being careful to avoid being electrocuted himself.  
The robot's vision rapidly changed between a neutral shade of blue to a tortured hue of red, many of its core programs shutting down in response to the massive surge of energy it was not designed to withstand. With a groan that echoed eerily around the room, it fell to the ground with its arm still outstretched in a firing position.

Meanwhile, Ulrich was busy trying to survive in the fight against XANA himself. It was difficult to continue to dodge XANA's blows, since XANA was using tactics similar to when XANA-William was fighting Ulrich on Lyoko all those years ago. Using brute strength and the advantage of a large blade against Ulrich, XANA was constantly forcing Ulrich to continually rely on a defensive position.

Ulrich gritted his teeth and poured more strength in trying to maintain his defense against XANA's attack. He was forced onto his knees in an effort to keep his swords in their defensive X-shaped position to continue blocking XANA's blade. It was no use, he was exhausted, and XANA had a seemingly limitless amount of energy. With 40 life points or less remaining due to the damage he had received from XANA, there was practically there was nothing he could do. He could barely remain in his kneeling position, let alone keep his defenses up.

"Hmm… growing weaker, Ulrich. Tsk, tsk. I expected you to put up a better fight… ah, well."

With that, XANA lifted up his blade and slammed it onto Ulrich's blades. Unable to put up much of a resistance due to his current weakened state, Ulrich closed his eyes so he wouldn't see the blow coming. A dull pain throbbed throughout his body as the blade cut his form into two, both parts turning into static before fizzing completely out of existence. XANA stared at where Ulrich had been moments ago before frowning slightly and resting his blade on one of his "shoulders".

"Mercy killing…though I wasn't much of the mercy type, anyhow." XANA remarked, casting his gaze around the heavily damaged room. "Who's next?"  
"You… I'm going to kill you for that!" Yumi snarled, whipping her fans out in an offensive position.  
"Did I touch a nerve there, Yumi?" he asked, tightening his grip on the blade.  
"You sure did, which is a pretty big mistake you made there." Yumi replied, using her athletic abilities to dodge XANA's attacks. "One rule you have to remember is…" Yumi kicked XANA, forcing him to stagger backwards in an attempt to regain his balance again. "Never make a woman mad."

Clone Aelita trained her newly-reloaded weapon where she thought it would deal the most amount of damage to XANA. With ammunition running low from the constant firing they had to do due to XANA's minions, she had to make every last shot count now. Sweat poured down her face and adrenaline was pumped through her veins by her rapidly beating heart. Her breathing hitched as she heard a low growling sound behind her, turning around to face the source of whatever had made such a noise. She was greeted by Aelita pouncing on her, knocking her weapon out of her hands, and furiously tearing at her midsection.

"Get off of me!" Clone Aelita yelled, elbowing Aelita's face, earning herself several bites to her arm.

Aelita responded by grabbing Clone Aelita by her shoulders and tossing her across the room, forcing Clone Aelita to land in a semi-defensive crouching position. She hissed in anger, and both of them leapt at each other with the intent to brutally harm the other. They collided in midair, and fell to the ground with a thump, still clawing at each other like wild animals. Their fighting soon evolved into more of an unpredictable sort of fighting- one moment they would be aiming for the other's pressure points, attempting to disable their enemy's motor functions, and the next moment, they would be at each other's throats using physical weapons.

Snarling with fury, Aelita tacked Clone Aelita, who responded by grabbing both of her hands with her hands in order to keep her from digging into her flesh. Yelling exclamations of anger at each other, they rolled over the floor, simultaneously attacking the other or defending themselves from the other's attacks. Though Clone Aelita had strength unparalleled by feats accomplished by humans, it didn't stop her from being wounded in battle, receiving cuts and bruises in return for giving savage punches and kicks to her opponent.

"Whoa!" Odd yelled, jumping to the side to avoid getting tangled within the brawl. "Catfight! Watch out!"  
"Huh?" Jeremie asked, eyes widening in realization when he noticed both Aelitas brawling with each other. "Uh oh…" Too late! Poor Jeremie was knocked into the middle of the fight, and was reduced to try pulling them apart, only yielding unsuccessful results.

"Waldo, Antea! I need some help over here!" Jeremie groaned.

Jeremie suddenly felt pain searing through his arm as Aelita had missed her intended target and had hit him instead. Jeremie hissed in pain and was dismayed at the amount of life points lost by just that one attack. His arm faded into static for a few seconds before coming back into existence again as his form attempted to keep itself together until his remaining life points were lost. Worriedly glancing at the life-point indication that flashed on the interface of his blue bracelet, he looked around to try to find where Waldo and Antea were.

"Waldo! Antea!" He called out, shaking his head when he saw his two children looking at him with an extremely confused expression. "No, guys. I didn't mean you two. You guys have to stay safe."  
"Sorry, but we we're kind of busy over here!" Waldo replied back, trying to avoid the live wiring that was strewn about the room.  
"We have to disable the supercomputer in time before XANA manages to release those robots and clones into the world!"  
"You are much too late!" XANA madly laughed. "The two hours I've been keeping you here have now passed! I was merely the distraction to keep you from splitting up and taking down my fighting force. Stage two has begun!" His laughter died down a little, and he gave the group a smirk before continuing. "I must thank you for playing your parts. Your reward is, as I possibly had stated before, a quick and equally painful extermination."

Yumi took the opportunity at his short distraction to score a hit on XANA, silently yelling in triumph at finally being able to attack him despite the rather impressive defensive maneuvers he had executed. XANA growled in anger and used his abilities to increase his speed exponentially, forcing Yumi continually dodge his attacks with little chance of being able to openly attack him again.

"Odd, William!" Jeremie shouted, pointing to XANA. "Assist Yumi in holding XANA off. Francis, you provide their backup from farther away, since you're not in a spectral form with ability enhancements, and therefore could be easily killed by XANA."  
"I hate being away from all the action…" Francis grumbled, using Clone Aelita's fallen weapon to fire at XANA from the relative safety of a robot's body.  
"Waldo, Antea! I need back-up over here now in restraining Aelita!"

By this time during the melee, Clone Aelita had tacked Aelita to the floor and landed on her back, her hands glowing a light pink color in preparation for her next attack. Clone Aelita had used the energy to power up her other abilities by redirecting the energy used primarily to assault enemies with an orb-like energy attack, which increased in effectiveness. Clawing at her adversary, Clone Aelita gouged two long, ragged marks in Aelita's back near her shoulder plates, surprised when she saw that they bled.

"She's… bleeding?" Clone Aelita asked in disbelief, suddenly finding herself lying on the floor with Aelita's hand drifting to the bow and arrows slung on her back, reaching for her weapons to finish off Clone Aelita.  
"There was a minor error in translating her to my former base of operations that caused her to be partly stuck in the real world, and partially stuck in the supercomputer where her information is now hosted." XANA explained through gritted teeth, slamming his fist down to create a shockwave that knocked the Lyoko Warriors standing in close proximity to his location to lose their balance.  
"Why are you telling us this?" Yumi asked, rolling on the ground to avoid being cleaved in half.  
"It would have been fun to see you kill off your old friend, but, alas, you were taking too long, as usual."

Aelita gripped her weapon with a sinister grin, her movements mostly unrestricted despite Jeremie's best attempts to pull her arm away. Jeremie nearly sighed in relief when Waldo and Antea finally arrived and was able to somewhat restrain her for the time being.

"Aelita!" Jeremie shouted, hoping that she would be able to hear him deep inside.  
"Mommy?" Antea asked, edging slightly closer to her. "Mommy, are you okay?"

Aelita closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, trying to free her arms from the tree adults that prevented her from finishing Clone Aelita off. The latter was still on the ground, her labored breathing and numerous wounds from battle easily discernable. Parts of her body were pixelating, indicating that she was too damaged for her form to continue to exist in the world. She lifted up a hand, and gave a grim smile when she saw parts of it breaking off and drifting away. With a small sigh of peace and the absolute trust that the Lyoko Warriors were going to be able to stop XANA once and for all, she closed her eyes, and let her body dissolve away into gray particles that floated, carried by an invisible wind, before disappearing into nothing. Among the digital particles was a pale pink-colored essence- the other half of Aelita, which formed into the yang part of the Taoist symbol.

"Aelita, please!" You have to remember us!" Jeremie was lightly shaking Aelita, who closed her eyes tighter as a battle raged within her mind. The memories of when she was with her friends played against the false memories XANA had instilled into her mind, Aelita groaning when she could not discern which of her memories were true.  
"Hurts…" she muttered, shaking her head. "Stop… make it… stop…"  
"Aelita! Stay with us!" Waldo shouted.

Inside of Aelita's head, memories played, though the colors were dulled to a Sepia tone. A memory sprung, unbidden, to the top of her mind. It showed a small girl following an aging old man through the maze of sewer tunnels before reaching a decaying factory that was no longer in use. Images flashed before her- a gigantic fire elemental's fist coming towards her to smash her into an icy landscape, the wolf staring at a young, sobbing girl, a mountain cabin, the Men in Black, and the digital landscape of a forest.

As if sensing the sudden change in Aelita's composure, the essence hung in the air for a moment before it entered through the still-bleeding wounds on Aelita's back. Aelita panted her breathing slowing down as a sense of tranquility filled her being. The two jagged wounds on her back glowed a golden yellow before the light faded away.

"Aelita?" Jeremie questioned, peering curiously into her eyes as she opened them. Waldo and  
Antea had eased up on their grip, letting her arms fall to her side.

Instead of the cold, predator-like stare he expected to see, he saw her usual emerald eyes. Jeremie frowned when he saw the conflict that mirrored the internal battle within herself, eyes clouded over with the inability to recognize who she was anymore. It was if the Aelita he had known and loved for years was slipping away right before his very eyes. Her eyes drifted towards his, recognition flitting across her face for a moment after she had tried to remember who he was.

"Jer… rem…mie?" she mumbled, unsure of herself.  
"Welcome home, Aelita!" Jeremie exclaimed, hugging Aelita with ferocity he had not known that he was capable of until now.

Aelita stayed silent, blinking in confusion. Being "away" for such a long time, she had forgotten what had happened over the course of the months she was not in control of herself. Her motor functions were slow, at best- getting used to moving on her own will was going to take some time getting used to again. Antea and Waldo was about to give similar actions of affection when Aelita, with some difficulty, held up her hand, and pointed to XANA.

"There…" she weakly said, trying to remember how to talk normally again.

Jeremie, Antea, and Waldo looked just in time to see XANA raise his blade with a mighty roar, and slam the sword towards William, who raised his own sword to block it. His anger level only being increased by the damage the group was inflicting on his form, XANA swung his blade around, and slammed it into Yumi, instantly sending her back into the tower Jeremie had used on Lyoko. Francis growled and shot bullets after bullets at XANA, clutching the bomb with his other hand. Aelita stared at the bomb, taking into account the amount of wounds she had and the effect of instantly killing most of XANA's forces versus leaving them to be and solely concentrating on XANA.

"You… uh… jarhead." Aelita whispered to Francis, crawling towards him.  
"What do _you_ want?" Francis growled, keeping up the near-constant stream of bullets.  
"I want to make a sacrifice... that is, I want to eliminate XANA by using that bomb you have there." Francis stopped firing for a moment, and looked at her incredulously.  
"It's a small bomb. It's not going to have much of an effect."  
"That's if you don't know where to put it." Aelita gave a sly wink after a few attempts.

Francis gave a soft "oh" in understanding, handing the explosive device to her in the most secretive way he thought was appropriate given the situation- tossing it to her behind his back. Aelita held the device in her hand, studying its arming mechanisms. Jeremie, momentarily turning his attention away from XANA for a moment, turned towards Aelita, eyes widening in surprise when he saw her with the bomb Francis had given her.

"Aelita, what are you doing?" Jeremie yelled, making a desperate snatch for the bomb.  
"Jeremie, no, I have to do this!" Aelita held it out of his reach, using her outstretched left hand to keep Jeremie at bay.  
"No, Aelita! I just got you back! I'm not going to lose you again!"  
"Jeremie, please, you have to trust me…"

Jeremie was silent, staring at her with his sapphire eyes that were pleading, and longing for a different solution that would cripple XANA's power. Her emerald eyes shone with the bitter sadness that accompanied making choices and sacrifices to save the world from XANA's wrath.

"_Oh, I don't think you trust…_

_In… My… Self-Righteous Suicide…_

_I… cry… when angels deserve to die…"_

"Waldo, make her stop!" he tugged at Waldo's arm, instantly drawing his attention. He sighed and looked at them with the grim realization of her determination to prevent XANA from completely taking over the world.  
"It's no use, Jeremie…" Waldo gave a slow, sad shake of his head. "She's always been a determined girl, even as a child. You can't change her mind once she's made it up." Jeremie bit back tears. This was exactly what he had feared Waldo would say, experiencing her stubbornness firsthand when it came to several fights with XANA on both Lyoko and on Earth.  
"I won't let her do this!" Jeremie cried. In the background, William was devirtualized.

"Daddy, get my children to safety. Take… jarhead with you. I'm not sure if he's in a virtual form or not."  
"My name is Francis!" Francis yelled.  
"If I was as strong as I was all those years ago, I would have taken the bomb away from you and done the action myself. …It would be the least I could do, since I had created this menace in the first place…"  
"Good luck, dad. Take good care of mom, the kids, and Jeremie for me." Aelita gave a hug and heartily thumped him on the back.  
"I will, Aelita."  
"Good, now go!" Waldo nodded, picked both of Aelita's and Jeremie's children up and left with Antea and Francis.

XANA roared and attempted to stop them from reaching the exit- the door that the robots had blown open in an attempt to try to kill the group there-, but Odd reminded him of his presence, giving a cocky grin as he deftly dodged XANA's attacks.

"I'm not going to go!" Jeremie declared, defiantly standing with his arms crossed.  
"I don't have time for this, Jeremie." Aelita growled through clenched teeth as she set the bomb onto the supercomputer and began to set the timer on it.  
"I'm not going to let you do this… there simply has to be another way to eliminate XANA from existence!" Jeremie reached for her, but found himself being roughly shoved away.  
"Jeremie, stop. You and I both know that XANA's forces are preparing to deploy at this moment, and the place where I am setting this bomb now is the most effective point there is. Once this bomb goes off, the entire collection of core programs stored within this supercomputer will be eradicated from existence, meaning that the system will instantly shut down, thus crippling XANA and effectively eradicating most of the forces he has prepared. Now, go!"  
"I won't!" Jeremie yelled, stamping his foot down like a 6-year old in the middle of a tantrum.  
"I said go!" Aelita picked him up and threw him out of the open door, and into the corridor.  
"Nooooo!" Jeremie howled as Antea dragged him away from the supercomputer room, and out of the building.

Waldo, Antea, and Francis didn't stop running, not even when they were at a safe distance from the building. Jeremie struggled and attempted to free himself, but found his attempts highly unfruitful. He watched in horror as a part of the building exploded, sending a plume of orange and yellow fire shooting towards the sky, and then saw the whole building enveloped in flame as the fire spread to other parts of the building. The two stopped, and all six of them stared at the building, which was burning brightly- a start contrast against the darkening sky. Dark clouds created from the burning building drifted in the wind as the sky's color changed from dark blue to blood red.

The part of the building that had hosted the explosion crumbled, the rest of the building soon following after, slowly but surely. A shadow moved closer to the Lyoko Warriors in the forest, accompanied by other shadows fitting in the darkness provided by the darkening sky and the forest. A car pulled up about a half-hour later, and the rest of the Lyoko Warriors got out. They watched the building burn to the ground before collapsing. The shadows in the forest moved back, and melted into the forest without a sound.

[Page Break]

The bomb timer set to1 minute and 30 seconds; Aelita stepped back from the bomb, trying to find peace in the last few moments of her life that she had. The small pang of guilt and regret was growing in her, and she berated herself for causing Jeremie so much pain by doing this one selfish act of saving the world. Perhaps she had wanted to finally prove that she could save the world from XANA on a whole, after appearing fragile and weak after all this time. Perhaps she wanted to know how the other warriors felt like when they saved the day on their own. Nevertheless, it was just a selfish action that she had attempted to make into a heroic situation by trying to convince herself that it was for the benefit of the world. The beeping started- a sure sign that the countdown had initiated and there was no stopping it.

Once the bomb would detonate, a great explosion and burst of fire would result, with the rest of the building would following soon after the initial detonation. The systems XANA had put into place in his building would fail, and XANA would be weakened enough so that he would not be able to take the whole world in one fell swoop.

XANA roared in triumph as Odd was finally defeated, raising his sword into the air and shaking it viciously. He let the sword hit the ground with a 'thump' and let his piercing gaze bore into Aelita's emerald ones.

"So… this is the end…" he muttered wonderingly.  
"I suppose it is." Aelita nodded, watching as the detonator passed the 1:00 mark.  
"I meant for you." He gave a particularly cringe-worthy grin, showing his sharp teeth in what appeared to resemble a sadistic grin.  
"It doesn't matter to me. In the end, nothing matters."  
"I suppose so… I wonder what the afterlife is for you humans…" his grin widened. "Perhaps you humans don't have an afterlife after all."  
"I'll see you in hell, then." Aelita gave a smile of her own, a grim smile that highlighted the loss that came with every victory in the world.  
"Not likely. I'll leave you to the consequences of your actions." XANA darkly said before disappearing into the shadows once more. Aelita stared at the spot he had once been in, before turning her gaze back to the timer. Sixteen seconds left to go. She let her mind recess into some of the memories it stored, and play them in the few moments of life she had left.

**Fifteen…**

She was alongside Jeremie in the park, laughing happily a joke Jeremie had just made.

**Fourteen…**

She was with Jeremie and the group, waging a snowball war on the Kadic grounds. She managed to cream Ulrich in the face with a good sized snowball, earning a hail of snowballs in retaliation.

**Thirteen…**

Finding her father's secret files in a train station locker...

**Twelve, Eleven, Ten…**

Being ripped away from the world and placed in a virtual world, where there wasn't supposed to be danger.

**Nine, Eight, Seven…**

Laughing with her father as she played with Mr. Puck...

**Six… Five… Four…**

Aelita closed her eyes and blew on her cake, grinning when her mother playfully put a dab of the cake's icing on her nose.

**Three…**

Aelita spread her arms out, waiting for fate to come and claim her…

**Two…**

… waiting for death to come and find her…

**One…  
**

…recalled song lyrics that seemed to fit the situation…

_"Father (Father!),_

_Father (Father!),_

_Father, right now!_

_Father into your hands, I commend my spirit,_

_Father into your hands, why have you forsaken me?_

_In your eyes forsaken me,_

_In your thoughts forsaken me,_

_In your heart forsaken… me… oh…_

_Trust… in my… self-righteous suicide…_

_I… cry… when angels deserve to die…"_

**Zero. **

Grimly smiling, she braced herself for the explosion, suddenly finding peace among the chaos of the world. The explosion filled her ears, temporarily making her deaf. The burst of heat hit her, and she was vaguely aware of flames licking her body as she began to lose all feeling. The structure, weakened from the damage it had sustained from XANA's robots and the explosion began to start collapsing.

… she breathed in for the last time, her wounds beginning to sap her remaining life…

… she gave her last smile…

"Jeremie…" she breathed, not bothering to move from her position, nor give into her natural instincts to survive.

… spoke her last words…

… and drifted away from the world.

"_In… my… self-righteous suicide…_

_Why… cry… when angels deserve to die?"  
_

What remained of Aelita's body was buried under the fallen architecture. The full moon shone through the blood red sky, casting its glow upon the ruins. The smoke drifting to the sky made it appear that the full moon had transfigured into the Yin-Yang symbol. The balance of the world was disrupted. Nothing would ever be the same again.

**The End is Here**


	11. Epilogue

**AN**: Being extremely unsatisfied with how I had to cram a lot of action in a little less than seven thousand words, I probably will edit it to make room for about 2-3 thousand more words, if I can… which will probably take a few days or so, depending on how fast I decide to update. I am also displeased at how I had portrayed the scene before Aelita basically committed suicide (before the Page Break thing). It was just… unrealistic. Stick around for the next section of this story, if you want to. It's basically a, five- thousand worded explanation on the series. It's finally over!

A warm thank you to AelitaStones1 (aka "Aelita") for the numerous amounts of reviews she has written on my stories.

**Code Apocalypse: Epilogue  
July 13, 22:40**

Jeremie stared at the ground, unable to comprehend what had just happened, no matter how many times he ran it through his mind. Everything had went by so quickly- infiltrating into XANA's base of operations, running for their lives from mechanical monsters, breaking through to Aelita, her sacrifice, the explosion… everything that had happened in the last hours had seemed like it was nothing more than a blur of events to him. His gaze shifted towards the ruins of what was once a group of buildings before they looked away from the charred masses again and back towards the ground. Michael panted happily as Jeremie stroked his fur and rubbed the base of his ears, wagging his tail furiously as Jeremie continued to pet him.

What used to be several structures grouped together in the woods was now a mass of twisted metal, broken bricks, and burnt wood, still smoldering slightly. The large plumes of black smoke in a burning red sky had easily attracted the firefighters, who responded almost immediately by sending out a squadron of helicopters and planes carrying water in their storage holds. Once they arrived, the water would be dumped onto the fire as well as the surrounding vegetation to keep the fire from spreading. The battle raged on for hours- the fire was increasing in temperature, almost to the point that the water would be easily turned into vapor.

Thankfully, the weather had cooperated- what began as a light rain shower turned into a downpour of rain- the result of copious amounts of humidity lingering in the surrounding area for several days. The firefighters then gained the upper hand on the battle- taking the fire out in less than an hour.

Ash drifted from the site, one piece of the soft, gray-black material landing on Michael's nose. He snorted and blew it off, shaking his fur to free himself of the substance building-up on his fur. The unpleasant odor of burnt wood and smoke lingered around the area- it seemed like there wasn't anywhere in the world that he could escape to in order to forget the distinct smell of the smoke and fire, or the events that had happened. With a sigh, he stopped petting Michael and let the almost fully-grown wolf roam free.

A cool wind blew through the trees, and Jeremie shivered slightly. Yumi draped a blanket over his shoulder. Jeremie gave a small smile in acknowledgement, and Yumi nodded, not wishing to disturb him at the moment. Yumi and the others had rented a car and had driven as fast as they could, arriving just in time to see the structures collapse. It was clearly a logical choice, Jeremie thought, once he began to think about it. They wouldn't spend an hour walking to one of their own cars and then driving here separately. With Yumi behind the wheel, even turning in the wrong direction several times due to the high speed didn't deter her from trying to reach her friends.

Waldo walked by, and Jeremie motioned him over with a wave of his hand. With a slightly guilty expression, Waldo stopped and changed direction, heading towards his son-in-law with a guilty conscience. Huddling closer, he signaled with another hand gesture that he wanted to make this talk as private as possible.

"You didn't fully explain to me why you let Aelita go." Jeremie whispered, looking at Waldo with mixed emotions- curiosity, anger, and anxiety. Waldo swallowed; glad that Jeremie couldn't see his pupils through the thick tinted glasses he wore.

"When you get to be as old as me, Jeremie, you learn that sometimes, you have to let the most treasured things in your life go."

Silence met Waldo, which gave him an excuse to carry on with his explanation.

"You see, when I had sacrificed, or attempted to, my being in Lyoko all those years ago, I had to let go of Aelita, if I was going to let the beings on the world continue to survive. If I had let those feelings interfere with my thinking, I probably wouldn't have done it in the first place!"

"… Continue…"  
"For you see, Jeremie, Aelita had done the same thing to you, me, your children and my wife just a few hours ago. Both of us were in her place, where she had to painfully watch as I let myself be taken by death, helpless to stop the situation. She was in my place, and played the role quite well. …What I mean by that phrase is that her determination to stop XANA didn't let the thought of death faze her from the ultimate goal, or as you might call it, her personal mission to cripple XANA as much as she could in one swift blow."  
"It wouldn't have made a difference. Though we have won a battle in a Pyrrhic victory, XANA could still win the overall war. We have lost." Jeremie hung his head down, and Waldo scratched his beard thoughtfully.  
"Wouldn't made a difference, you say? Tell me, Jeremie. Would you have wanted hundreds of clones of you and your friends, as they committed horrible acts simultaneously and framed you for the things they did? Perhaps the government would have thought that you and your friends had committed these acts on your own, and might have chased you down in their craze to hold onto their lives. Perhaps they would have you guys imprisoned, maybe executed you and your friends for things that you or your friends never did."  
"But-"  
"A weaker enemy is easier to defeat, is it not?"  
"Yes… I suppose so." Jeremie sighed.  
"Don't dwell on the past… I have… thought too much on the past… and it led to my madness… the creation of the supercomputer… XANA… and the ripple effect of my one action, one that would change Aelita's life forever…"  
"What do you mean?"  
"I _mean _that if I hadn't been mentally deranged from the loss of Antea and the pressures of working on Project: CARTHAGE, Lyoko would have never existed. You would have found nothing in the factory except for the scrap metal and dust lying around. You wouldn't have befriended the current friends you have now… and… you would have never met Aelita."  
"Never met Aelita?"  
"No, Jeremie. Right now, she would be around 35 years of age, if she wasn't stuck in the supercomputer for 11 years. She would have grown up to be a woman that would be strong in both the physical and mental aspects, but secretively lonely inside. Perhaps she would have loved someone else, and the future might have been different."  
"Perhaps… but I am happy for the things she has taught and shown me… for being a friend that became close to me… as if she was one of my own family members."  
"Never forget, Jeremie, never forget."  
"I won't, Mr. Schaeffer."

With a small smile, Waldo got up and helped Jeremie up and into the waiting van, where Francis was performing minor repairs on the van's mechanical parts.

"I hate vans… and planes… and the water… and small towns… and clones… and XANA…" Francis grumbled, trying to reverse the damage the clones had done in an attempt to sabotage the Warriors. "Aha!" He cried triumphantly when the engine roared to life and started up. "Get in, kiddies, and I'll show you how real men drive!"  
"Oh, God, no" Yumi groaned, pulling out the keys to the rental car. I prefer to cause my own accident, thank you."  
"Suit yourself." Francis whistled merrily, getting into the driver's seat.  
"Oh, and Mr. Schaeffer?" Jeremie said, pausing at the open van door.  
"Hmm?" Waldo questioned, quirking an eyebrow in interest.  
"Thank you... for everything." No problem, Jeremie.  
"Hey, ladies! Are you gonna spend eternity dawdling behind, or are you gonna get in here?"  
"We're coming, we're coming!" Jeremie grumbled.

With a swish of the doors, the automatic lock clicked into place, and the van drove off, the rented car following not too far behind.

As they left, a shadow came out the dark, accompanied by 6 other shadows that followed silently behind their master towards the ruined buildings. XANA rested his sword on his shoulder and let his gaze wander over the ruins, his expression blank and unreadable. He narrowed his ruby-red eyes before he let out a nasty grin.

"I must admit that your actions were a fine attempt to sabotage my operations, dear sister." XANA let the blade hit the ground. "You did exterminate most of my fighting force, as well as the chance to immediately take over the world. However, dear sister, you made one mistake… I live… and you failed to take down my best fighters.." With one swish of his dark cape, he ground his feet in the dirt, turned around, and walked away, his clone fighters following behind him.

**July 14, 00:00  
**

The moon shone through the clouds in the sky, the rays touching over the ruins and illuminating the surrounding area. At that moment, as Jeremie stared outside of the passenger seat window, he gave a sigh and began to sing softly, remembering a song he had heard a long time ago.

_Where teary, teary eyes once stood, _

_Weary sighs the tune,_

_Dreary, dreary for all the night,_

_And eerie light of the moon…_

Biting his lip and in a fit of boredom, decided to add some of his own lyrics to the song in order for it to fit both his mood at the current situation at hand.

_Oh, dreary, dreary, is our dire plight,_

_Clearly spelled is our doom,_

_Bathed in blood where fire burned bright,_

_Her body lies in a stone tomb._

The van drove farther and farther away, leaving the ruins behind. As the moon reached its zenith, and fully bathed the ruins in its light, one of the rocks moved. A hand made its way out of the rubble, madly scrabbling for something to hold onto. It grabbed onto a sturdy structure, and slowly pulled itself out, an arm and then an upper torso appearing. The figure heaved itself out of the rubble, standing on the top of the former structure without any fear.

It flexed and un-flexed its muscles, letting the two large appendages that were attached to its back spread out after being cramped in the small space. It breathed deeply, as if it hadn't breathed in all of its life, taking in the scents around it. It roared in exaltation of life, having gone through the fire and the flames, through life and death, just to come back and hand out its revenge against the evil that plagued humanity. It let its roar fade to a growl as it tried to remember something, but came up with nothing in memories at the moment.

What was it? It gave itself a quick look over, unsure of what it was, exactly. Her mind answered back with two words it had pulled out from a more primitive form of knowledge- 'female human'.

It was… a she? She was… human? Puzzled, she asked her mind once again, delving into the dark depths of her knowledge to find out who she was. One memory came to her mind, murky and almost unrecognizable. Spelled out on a birth certificate was "Antea Schaeffer", and under that, in the section that said 'daughter', the words clearly spelled "Aelita".

Aelita… Schaeffer? 'That was good enough of a name' she thought, before spreading her wings again. They were simply enormous in length, though instead of appearing like angel wings, they appeared more like a hawk's or an eagle's wings- powerful, and built for speed. Giving little thought to what lay ahead, she gave a deep growl that echoed in her throat, a warning to her enemies, although she didn't know who it was.

"I… live…"

With that, she took off with her massive wings, carrying herself farther and farther away from her past with every wingbeat,

AN: I'm not an expert in fire. I don't know the temperature point at which water turns into vapor within seconds (Reference to help you understand what I'm trying to say: the scene in "The Incredibles", where Frozone was unable to extinguish the fire in the burning building using his ice powers. He explained it to Bob (Mr. Incredible) why he couldn't extinguish them using his powers, but I had forgotten what he had said)

… I also wonder what would have happened if I didn't write the TX series, or any CL fanfiction after the two scrapped stories (see the Afterword)…

Song: "Dreary, Dreary" by the Gothic Archies (Song made for "A Series of Unfortunate Events"

Aelita lives. Be happy.


	12. Afterword

Reason to my Madness, and Madness to my Reason: The Explanation of the XANAfication series- or the author speaks on behalf of all the stories that were written through time.

Hello, dear reader. I thank you for taking the time in clicking on this link, or clicking on the arrow button that would have lead to the next uploaded chapter the writer has put into the story's file to find out why I had written the series, and the developments in my writing along the way. It may seem that I am ignoring your comments and reviews, but I assure you that I am not ignoring you at all- I have put in links to the places where I have accounts in, and links to my email accounts. As of now, while I am writing this, I am looking over the stats I had gotten over the almost-complete year and 115-plus thousand words I have been writing since the first story I have uploaded to this website. In general, I would like to thank all of my readers for submitting their reviews (totaling 66 altogether), the amount of views for all the stories (5,221 total views at the moment I'm calculating this), and the people that have favorited my stories (a little over 52). In my gratitude towards all of you readers, I will now take the time to write about the series, and answer some questions that I have not been able to answer before.

In Eighth grade, I wrote my first hard copy of a Code Lyoko fanfiction recorded in the files I have in storage. There is a possibility that I have written some sort of Code Lyoko fanfiction before the initial first Code Lyoko fanfiction I have completed. It is true that I had written a story on the Code Lyoko gang as wolves somewhere in April 2009, as well as another story that involved my first OCs (story and OCs were later thrown into the trash bin of stories that never made the cut). The plot was first written during a minute of boredom on my main YouTube page ("One day it was a normal day at Kadic academy. Sissi was being everything but nice and helpful, Herve was being emperor zit-face, and Nicholas was being the back-bone of the gang. IT seemed like a day when XANA wouldn't attack, and it would be a Sunday when the Lyoko gang could rest from constantly fighting XANA.  
The peacefulness was ruined when they heard Milly running around the building whil Aelita, Jeremie, Odd, and Ulrich were having Science. "Fire! Fire!" she yelled. Mrs Hertz came out to yell at her from making noise, but then she smelled smoke. "Everybody out!" she yelled, "Everybody out!'").

The first completed Code Lyoko fanfiction I had done was when the gang was detectives in a murder mystery, partly inspired by SonNeko's artwork on the Code Lyoko gang as detectives. I had William Dunbar murder Jean Pierre, as well as Sissi Delmas, kidnap Aelita, and almost kill another gang. His partners were Mr. X (obviously XANA) and Peter Duncan. Though the digital copy has been destroyed during a regular re-imaging on the main PC from a virus, I am happy to have a hard copy of it (though I am sure that some pages are missing).

In late August of last year, several days after receiving my laptop for my school, I wrote the first draft of what came to be "The XANAfication"- the first fanfiction I have published in the famous . The story was posted in the Code: WIKI forums, and because I was persuaded by Lyokofanforever, the story was posted to several months later, in December of 2009. I was quite pleased with the reviews I had received, and so I started a writing career. As my writing has increased over time, so has the quality of it, leading me to believe that I should revisit the story that started it all and make a revised version of it. It could be a rewrite, though I suspect that I should leave the original text on by itself, so that my readers could compare the works. However, I am not certain whether I should go through this or not.

Art has pretty much inspired me to write also, and was a great motivator in writing some of my fanfictions. For instance, sometimes I would see great works of art by people, and it would inspire me to write on it. It's like science- scientists build upon other scientists' works to make something that would reflect the works of his/her works, along with the other scientists' works for which he/she has built upon. For Example, I saw Aslan1's artwork titled as "Code Fantasy" quite a long time ago in Freshman year, and it inspired me to write the Code Lyoko characters in the medieval times, around the 16th century, since the subject (on the CL characters in medieval times) was hardly touched on at all by the fanfiction writers on this site. Re-incarnating the Lyoko Warriors as actual warriors in a time period that isn't really known about was a quite interesting topic, and so I explored it a bit more, actually doing some research into that time, though I somewhat altered the events to fit in with the Alternate Universe theme. I chose "Ensemble", which means "together" in French, to be the fitting title, since it takes place in France, and shows the group as one body, working together in times both hard and easy.

As Flyboy961 had pointed out one day while chatting with him, I can agree that the first book in the XANAfication series is quite dull in a way. It was intended to be that way. I had initially planned to write more, but I thought it would be better if I had left it vague and leave the readers with a sort of curiousness for them to continue to read on in the series, and gradually understand what I was writing about. As my writing and word posting has increased, I am proud to see how many people are viewing the stories. I do take ever review into consideration, and try to reply back to them, if there are comments that particularly stand out.

At this point, I will take a moment to thank those who had reviewed my stories, particularly those who had pointed out what I needed to fix, and what I should improve on in later chapters, as I do not usually note whoever had done so in my chapters (I prefer to get right to the story instead of boring everyone). A special thank you will go to Flyboy961 for reviewing my stories, and for reviewing them, pointing out spelling and errors- particularly the ones in the commas. A special thank you will also go to the readers, who I would not have any motivation to write stories with. Your help will always be greatly appreciated, and though I usually do not mind that people don't review, I thank those that took their time and did so.

Code: Apocalypse was designed to mainly be a bridge between A.S.O.U.A. and the last book in the series, Endgame. I do guarantee that the language in the last book will be much coarser, with a lot of swearing involved, along with mass killings and some bloody/gory scenes, so as to make the experience more realistic. To this end, it will be rated as Mature, though it will not have any adult scenes. There has been a suggestion that I should make a T-rated version, with less gore, violence, and swearing (most of it being replaced with dashes or asterisks), though I wonder if it's worth writing it.

The last two books in the series has a more serious tone to them (Endgame will have a more prominent air of seriousness to it, as soon as I get to writing the first chapter), as with the first of the chapters in this book (the third one), having XANA actually try to kill Jeremie in a more extreme way by murdering him with a dagger to the heart, in comparison to the lighter tone I used in the first two books. Why a darker tone? As my writing developed and the ideas and story progressed, I figured that XANA would need to have a more cynical side to him, and actually try to kill the gang without much of an elaborate scheme (as elaborate schemes often get too complicated to the point of it ultimately resulting in failure).

Making the XANAfication story into a four book story wasn't because I wanted to have more books/fanfictions listed under my profile to impress people, nor did I want more publicity- updating the same book multiple times with new chapters has the same effect on the latter action I mentioned. It was made to act like roadblocks, stopping me from writing too much in a story or in a chapter and continuing to spew ideas with little thought to the plot. It also served its purpose of acting as a graduating and developing story as my writing began to get more into detail.

The concept of XANA-Aelita was a very intriguing prospect to me, particularly after I saw the second half of "Wrong Exposure". Seeing XANA easily use Aelita as his pawn in the episode, and have her duel Ulrich in a battle of wits and strength made me wonder how well XANA can manipulate the people or objects he possesses. It's basically a large game of chess between XANA and the Lyoko Warriors (which I hinted in Me, Myself, and I- one of the weirder stories I wrote due to boredom). XANA's repeated possession of Aelita did not help wane my interest in the topic (She was possessed approximately 6 times throughout the Television series).

For those who know me well, it is common for me to bend reality and manipulate it into something I find to be a little more comfortable. I have painted a red tablecloth a nice reddish pink instead of the velvety red of the tablecloth in the still life this year. To say the least, the art teacher was not amused. I just want to see how far I can bend reality before it snaps right in half down the middle. It's probably not the best of ideas, but I'm not a good listener- my mind wanders away from the subject. …It's like sleeping mentally while being awake physically at the same time.

For those questioning what happened to Aelita in the last chapter, I cannot answer that for you, otherwise writing the last book would be pointless. I can answer some questions that readers may have, however. In the injection (as Flyboy961 had asked me for months before I finally answered him and stopped being very cryptic towards his question), however, it was a fluid that contained a strength-enhancing ingredient that vastly improved her in the areas XANA wanted her to be improved in, but it destroyed her higher brain functions to the point of her only speaking basic words in short sentences and mainly thinking about ripping the enemy's guts out. Think of the basic Hulk model- muscles, but little brain. XANA has some control over her actions, though her actions are mostly based on primitive reactions and feelings, to which XANA guides as hatred to her friends (which he re-labeled as her enemies). In keeping with the traditional Hulk characteristics, Aelita has almost forgotten the use of the language people use, often saying short, basic sentences, though I wouldn't script her to say "Aelita smash!"

For those asking what Aelita had become in this book, Aelita had essentially become the thing that she had feared. Her caring nature was tossed aside by XANA, and her fear of wolves had lead XANA to use this as leverage for her hatred [of herself]. Seeing as she cannot stand herself, XANA redirects her anger towards those he sees as targets and those who he sees as 'in his way of his progresses.' Half wolf and half human, Aelita's confusion can be likened to the hybrid's sense of confusion on who they really are, and where their places are in the world. XANA takes advantage of their confusion on who or what they are, and bends their perspective to his favor.

Towards the end, I had Aelita recover some of her lost self, and had her use the common self-sacrifice theme that is used in many fanfictions I have viewed within the year. However, I had made this self-sacrifice slightly different. The trope of redemption equaling death is used, though I have slightly bent it in another way to suit the last book- the ultimate redemption and finding the inner self amid the chaos in the world.

I also have quite the affection towards playing Left 4 Dead, which came accidentally when my little brother purchased it during a vacation. Seeing the game in action spurred me to play it and eventually install it on my laptop after multiple tries. As you can see, I have embedded the game's quotes into Code: Apocalypse with Francis's hate quotes ("I hate vans"), and have mentioned his hatred of boats, boat people, and boat lawyers in Chapter 7.

My writing style varies quite a lot with every chapter or story. Sometimes I feel in the mood to write one thing, and sometimes I feel in the mood to write another thing, or at least clarify something. I have apparently developed a fond liking for commas, and often put it in places where I'm not supposed to. Being that he was my story editor and reviewer before the publication of the chapter/story, I have to stop putting commas everywhere, which has now developed into "CWDF961", which means Comma Withdrawal Due to Flyboy961. Being a little comma crazy, I suppose the symptoms while in Comma Withdrawal is the obsession to put commas everywhere- and annoying people that dislike commas by using commas. To be fair, I recommend Flyboy961 for reviewing stories, but be cautious that sometimes that he can get carried away with being a bit punctuacidal (or commacidal…). For this reason, I called him the Comma Nazi.

At this point, I suppose I have a lot of apologizing and explaining to do. I apologize to the members of XANA's Lair for my abrupt exit. It was pretty much one of the most active forums for Code Lyoko. I have enjoyed being the ruler (aka Sector Leader) of the Mountain Sector for quite some time now, and proud of being the only female sector leader (I think. I might be wrong. I'm stull guessing the sector leaders for the Forest and Desert are guys, I don't remember who the SLs actually are) during that time. I wanted a clean break. I cut off connections. Their questions went unanswered, swallowed by the sound of silence that now greets them. As regretful am I to say this, this is how friends are... you meet them, get to know them, and then they get up and leave you behind. I treasured their friendship. I left them behind with hardly a trace. It is with hope that they forget about me. It is up to them to do the same- befriend the lonely people who build a fortress around themselves. You just might be able to save a life in a way you wouldn't have expected.

"I'm not running _away_ from my responsibilities, I'm running _to_ them." ~Yossarian, Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (Page 451)

"Suddenly, before Kar there stood that army of humans, their heads bowed in shame and fear and confusion. But among them now, side by side, man next to woman, some stood taller, calmly, like guardians. Though their eyes were closed, they turned their heads to one another and the animals, too, from where they had come. For they had looked into the darknes of their own natures, their own past, and have been able to bring light out of that darkness. As Kar watched, he noticed that the bees and little butterflies were settling on their shoulders and backs and suddenly, the strange humans opened their eyes and looked back at Kar. When he saw them, they were so beautiful that he was transfixed. Their eyes. The humans had the eyes of wolves." ~The Sight, by David Clement-Davies (Page 460)

Since I have not properly taken the time to write an explanation to my readers (making it seem like I am ignoring them), this is the reason why I am writing this and posting it as a 'chapter'. It is an afterword of some sort, and you may call it that. I have thought of some questions my readers might ask (or have asked) and will now answer them.

Q: Where do your ideas come from?  
A: Sometimes they come from dreams I had recently dreamt or remembered. Other times, it comes from pure inspiration, from chatting and or Role Playing with my friends on the internet. In fact, I can attribute someone to the idea of Ensemble, and for creating it. Though I cannot give you guys his name, I suppose I can give you his penname. If I remember correctly, his penname is LyokoWarrior17, and though he has not put any stories up, he is quite an amiable Role Player.

I never kept a journal or a diary to record my dreams, thoughts, and feelings. They were too impersonal- someone could easily break the lock or seal open and read it. For this reason, I kept everything in my head, where nobody could pry in there and read thoughts. I aspire to be a pilot captain, and dreaming about that position certainly does give a person ideas after a while (to the point of obsession for that job, I must admit, which lead to a friend writing a story on Aelita flying a Cessna (I keep forgetting to mention that he spelled my penname wrong)).

Q: Why is your penname Commando Wolf and why did you choose a tomboyish name?  
A: I have named myself as Commando Wolf, purely on a joke between a friend long gone, and a short conversation one July 4th. I originally was named AelitaSchaefferTheFirst, though I thought it was too long, and changed it to my current penname. As for the name itself, I like being a tomboy. It's fun. Plus, I think it's funny when people think I'm a guy due to the penname- it's probably due to my weird sense of humor.

Q: How long have you liked Code Lyoko?  
A: It was a few years ago, actually. It was around when Cartoon Network started showing it on a programming block called "Miguzi". Though I really did not care about it at first, I remember being slightly disappointed when I missed an episode. At this point, it was in Season 1, and so I thought the graphics were a little bit on the poor side. I soon lost interest in the show itself, and did not come to like Code Lyoko until I saw an episode (Season 4) on Cartoon Network Video (the tab for Code Lyoko on CNV is long gone). I remember one of the first episodes I liked for Season 4 was "Kadic Bombshell". It started from there, and I soon became addicted to it. I actually did not like Aelita at first (having a completely different view of her, actually), but warmed up to her after seeing a few episodes of Season 4.

Q: If you like Aelita so much, why do you keep on killing her? *question asked by several readers*

A: Her personality in the show is that she is willing to sacrifice herself for others, in part of her caring nature and her concern for the wellbeing of others. Take for example when she despairs that she should have given herself up to the Scyphozoa in "Ultimatum". So, her willingness for self-sacrifice and her self-righteous suicide in the last chapters in this book were justified in part of her nature. As to why I like to keep killing or harassing her in XANA's plots- well, I'm just being realistic here. XANA pretty much hates her guts, so I can't make it anymore sugar coated than it already is. People are pretty much molded in to having a happy ending. I'm just a person that puts a sour note to the end of some stories to balance it out- not all stories have happy endings.

While answering the question on why I keep on killing her, instead of waffling the question and avoiding it, I suppose it's habit. Character death always seems to be the cincher for people, and so I suppose I somewhat use *cough* exploit it *cough* to grab people's attention. Since character death is widely used in many shows, I suppose I try to put some variation to it, or a bit of the self-righteous suicide thing. The reason I keep on killing Aelita is because I suppose Aelita is one of the central characters in the group, and somewhat acts as a mediator along with Yumi to stop the group from completely falling apart in the series. Killing Aelita is shown to have a wide effect on the group, and I suppose I keep on killing her because she's the character that has died the most in the show (The Key, three times in Common Interest, and in Distant Memory when she technically died when William threw her into the Digital Sea). It wasn't pick-on-Aelita year- I like picking on Odd better.

Q: How do you really view Aelita?  
A: Aelita is a character that can be molded into almost any sort of person. An example would be a fanfiction that portrays her as a devious person with a sweet personality to cover it up. You can make her into a person that can come off as depressed, as I explored in "S'envoler". Since Aelita's past is vague, and her past is not explored as much, I suppose the show is basically giving writers a chance to mold her childhood. I view Aelita as a character that's modest in contrast to being showy, and I often use her gentle behavior to highlight the contrast of her more ruthless side (the latter of which XANA exploits).

Q: Why do you hate Odd so much? *asked by multiple people*  
A: Personally, I perceive Odd Della Robbia to be a relaxed guy- the sort that drifts along and doesn't really stick around. Though Odd certainly does have his moments, I have to counter that Odd comes off as a playboy, and does not stick with any single person, which makes possibly any Odd pairing redundant. I suppose he's the sort of person that has a lot of an ego around himself, and prefers that people would treat him as a special person.

Q: Why did you name Jeremie and Aelita's dogs and children after people in the show?

A: With the exception of the wolf pup I named Catherine; I had no imagination to what I should name them. I did not think of a reasonable explanation until thesovietwarmachine asked me about it (the kids). I responded that Jeremie had thought that it would be better if Aelita had a piece of her past in the present (Jeremie thought Aelita's parents were not coming back at all and that there was no hope of bringing them back or reviving them, and so this is why he named their children as such). I named two of the wolf pups as Michael and Patrick, purely because I was unimaginative at the moment.

Q: Why are you naming some chapters after some songs?  
A: I felt like doing so, because the lyrics or the song name perfectly describes the situation at the moment. Also, it's because I'm legally allowed to do it.

Q: How is your XANA different from the other writers' XANA?

A: I imagined XANA to be a sadistic type of AI that has an odd sense of humor. For example, he might torture his enemies before killing them, or toying around with them, like a cat might do with a ball of yarn. Because he is constantly angry from his failures, I suppose I made him more butter as the show progresses, and I suppose that in remembering his constant failures, his overwhelming hatred propels him to eradicate them without any mercy. Pitting one of their group against them seems like an ideal way to begin, I suppose.

In all honesty, I don't think I made XANA very different from other writers' XANA. Basically, he's still cruel and having little to no remorse over peoples' plights. I didn't make him nice or with a sunshiny personality because quite frankly, I don't think he is capable of being happy (except when he has won, but happiness in general is far out of reach for XANA).

Q: What is with your fascination with wolves? *asked on my formspring account months ago*  
A: I suppose it has stemmed from my fascination of Code Lyoko, and it really kicked off a little over a year ago. I always was fascinated what the wolf had to do in Aelita's life, and how it related to Code Lyoko itself. I suppose it was an incarnation of XANA observing them, using it as scare-fuel for the Lyoko Warriors in general. So far, I have not come up with any leads. SearchingLyoko has mentioned that wolves are extinct in France a few months ago.

Unresolved questions asked before the ending of Code: Apocalypse that will be now answered here:

Q: Why didn't the group check out the original supercomputer earlier? It was the only weapon they had against XANA.

A: It's been approximately 10 years since they last deactivacauted or saw the supercomputer. I suppose that seeing the supercomputer right away would invoke an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. Actually, I don't know. You write the story.

Q: Why does everyone suddenly seem to believe that the solution exists in the real world (William and his guns) when the answer was a program the first time.

A: But the Multi Agent Program didn't work out as well as the Lyoko Warriors hoped; didn't it?

-Real Answer-

Have you heard of the term "Kill it with Fire"? I supposed I had chosen that way, since their first priority is removing the most threats, then killing off XANA, like it has been for most of the episodes in Code Lyoko. In this case, the first priority is freeing the possessed people from XANA's grasp, eliminating the future threat (the Hybrids, once Clone Aelita has informed them of the clones), and then killing off XANA for good.

The Lyoko Warriors use weapons due to their belief that the hybrids, being part human, would die upon the impact of bullets, or the loss of blood. Since the polymorphs are bound to the human parts and the networking XANA is connected to, it would remove their ability to hide among real humans and act as spies (The specters/Polymorphic Clones of XANA have shown a static-like distortion upon impact, while going through things, when they are changing, or when pursuing /approaching a target (an example would be the MIB specter in "Crash Course").

When XANA uses a virus to kill off organic material such as humans, the specter half would have been wholly transferred onto the networking before the virus would be released, so they will not be affected as it sweeps through. However, the Lyoko Warriors infer that if they kill the hybrids without the specter side being wholly transferred onto the networking/XANA's network base, the specter half would be destroyed due to the specter losing its host, and it not being integrated enough into the networking to survive.

Q: What happens to the fanfiction pieces that you write, but never get finished or published?  
A: The fanfiction pieces would either be sent to a person for completion or for general review, or it would remain forever within my computer or USB flash drive, to be taken out whenever I feel like completing it (If I don't feel like completing it, it would go straight to the digital graveyard). ...Actually, The XANAfication was meant to be a one-shot thing, but people liked it so much that I expanded it into a series. Once I give a person an incomplete story that I am sure that I will not complete, it is theirs to do with as they wish, as I have given it to them. A prime example would be "The Runaway", which is a slightly AUish story I wrote earlier on. If anyone here wants me to publish a collection of unfinished fanfictions here, I will respectfully do so.

Questions, comments, or just flame-mail you want to send to me? That's what my formspring page is for- the link is on the profile. However, be warned that I will bite back if you give questions that are inappropriate, or if you decide to flame me. Hate mail is always accepted for the purpose of the flamers being embarrassed in some way or another when I retort. Support the stop of Cyber-Bullying! Send me hate mail!


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